SIMPLIFY Sci­ence Writ­ing

by Roberto

Writ­ing is an es­sen­tial part of all sci­en­tific en­deav­ors. Yet it is rare to find a sci­en­tist that finds it easy, not to men­tion joy­ful. I am not much dif­fer­ent. But af­ter many years at it, I have learned to take cer­tain steps that make the process at least less daunt­ing, even sim­ple. I dare say, some­times it's lots of fun. Be­liev­ing that some read­ers may find it use­ful, here's my un­so­licited ad­vice.

A while back, while prepar­ing for a lec­ture on the topic, I dreamt up the SIMPLIFY acronym to en­cap­su­late my ap­proach to writ­ing.

Se­lect. At STC we are con­stantly on the search for top­ics we'd like to write about. Once we iden­tify a sub­ject, we rou­tinely dis­cuss it amongst our­selves. Hav­ing a ready-made list makes topic se­lec­tion "a piece of cake." The ef­fort is in the prepa­ra­tion of the list. For a some­one at the early stages of writ­ing a re­search pa­per, the se­lec­tion process is al­ready fo­cused on the re­sults at hand. Yet, an im­por­tant start­ing place is the se­lec­tion of the or­der of how the re­sults at hand should be pre­sented to best com­mu­ni­cate them to a naive au­di­ence. This works best if done by dis­cus­sion not only with co-au­thors but, im­por­tantly, with friends/colleagues not di­rectly in­volved in the work. It is also at this stage when su­per­flu­ous and/or lack­ing re­sults are most eas­ily iden­ti­fied. By the end of this stage, you will have a clear pic­ture of the "sto­ry­line."

In­ves­ti­gate. Find­ing a new topic to write about gives me li­cense to dive freely into the ex­ist­ing lit­er­a­ture on the sub­ject. So, I must ex­er­cise great re­straint and know when it's time to stop and pro­ceed. For a re­search pa­per, this is about mak­ing sure that you have read and un­der­stand all the rel­e­vant lit­er­a­ture that al­lows you to place your work in the proper con­text; it's gath­er­ing the ma­te­r­ial you'll use mainly for your in­tro­duc­tion and dis­cus­sion. And, of course, in writ­ing a re­view, this is the bulk of the work. It most cer­tainly pays to keep short notes on (and easy ac­cess to) every item you de­ter­mine is use­ful as soon as you find it.

Meditate/Reflect. This step, of­ten over­looked, is crit­i­cal. It's where most of my key ideas for text arise and I also find it the most en­joy­able and re­ward­ing stage in the process. Once I sense that the source ma­te­r­ial is ready af­ter se­lect­ing and in­ves­ti­gat­ing, it's time to leave the lap­top and in­ter­net be­hind and play with the ma­te­r­ial in my mind, un­con­strained. I find that I best ac­com­plish this dur­ing early morn­ing runs or late af­ter­noon walk (yes, with my dogs). This will vary for each per­son, but the key is to have rea­son­ably long pe­ri­ods with­out dis­trac­tions. This al­lows amor­phous phrases or even en­tire para­graphs, to emerge in mind. There's no forc­ing them and don't ex­pect any or­der. It's a play­ful and dis­or­ga­nized ac­tiv­ity. If at­trac­tive parts of text arise, fol­low them, play with them, watch them evolve. You'll be able to go back to them later.

Pre­pare fi­nal fig­ures. Then, it's time to be­gin fo­cus­ing the ac­tiv­ity. And there's no bet­ter way than to pre­pare fig­ures (or ta­bles or other such data pre­sen­ta­tion aids). Since I'm go­ing to be putting ef­fort into this, I pre­pare them all the way so that I feel they are in fi­nal for­mat. While they might still change (and likely, they will), it's amaz­ing how much clar­ity of thought is gained from prepar­ing fig­ures in their fi­nal for­mat from this stage on­wards. In blog­ging, the fig­ures can be a bit like dec­o­ra­tions. But in re­search ar­ti­cles, they are the foun­da­tion around which text will be writ­ten. The text is re­ally writ­ing about the fig­ures. So, be­fore you start writ­ing, re­mem­ber the fi­nal fig­ures first. I like to say that with the fig­ures ready, the pa­per will write it­self. True, but not quite. You'll need an out­line.

List of para­graphs. Hav­ing as­sem­bled all the ma­te­r­ial and with fi­nal fig­ures on hand, it's time to bring or­der to my ideas. No bet­ter way to do this than to pre­pare an out­line and no bet­ter out­line than a list of para­graphs. In sci­ence writ­ing para­graphs have a mean­ing, they con­tain a sin­gle well-de­vel­oped con­cept. The first sen­tence of a para­graph presents that con­cept, so hav­ing a list of first sen­tences (even if rough at first) al­ways proves in­valu­able in writ­ing fi­nal text.

Ini­ti­ate Writ­ing. Now, fi­nally, it's time to write. At this point it is fair that say that the piece will write it­self. I also rec­og­nize that it is not al­ways easy to get rolling. What helps me? No dis­trac­tions: cell phone far away, I turn off the Wi-Fi on the lap­top if fur­ther in­ter­net search­ing gets in the way of writ­ing flow, and I set aside blocks of time when I'll be do­ing noth­ing else. What to do if no text comes out? I of­ten will start writ­ing non­sense and slowly be­gin di­rect­ing it to­wards the list of para­graph-open­ing sen­tences. Be­fore I re­al­ize it, I am fin­ish­ing those para­graphs. No mat­ter what I write, I make sure to write some­thing every time I sit down to do it. I do take lots of short breaks. Not only are they im­por­tant phys­i­cally – stretch the body – they also al­low me to go over text in my mind. Usu­ally in less time than I had suf­fered it might take, the text is done. Or al­most done.

Fin­ish writ­ing. Yes, there's the fi­nal edit­ing phase. That's when I re­al­ize there's lots of odd sen­tences here and there, as well at the un­par­don­able ty­pos and gram­mar mis­takes. And then, of course, comes help from oth­ers. The fi­nal edit­ing al­ways in­cludes at least one more set of eyes go­ing over the text. So, make sure you al­ways have a good friend and col­league will­ing to take on this task, and be ready to re­turn the fa­vor. Fi­nal ed­its can some­times seem to take for­ever. So, it's in­cred­i­bly use­ful to have dead­lines! At STC we are for­tu­nate, we must have posts ready to go every Mon­day and Thurs­day. Why? Com­pletely self-im­posed. But let me tell you, they work.

You're done! Not much more to say. I have fin­ished this post and so, it's time for me to cel­e­brate. And get some rest be­fore I start writ­ing again.

 

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