(With apologies to Raymond Carver and Haruki Murakami)

Zvezdelina Stankova knows what she is talking about when she talks about triangles. Watch:

I think most people with a basic understanding of geometry will be able to follow this presentation. Even those who don’t will not get the impression that she is just making stuff up. She is clearly drawing from a very solid foundation of knowledge and saying things that she is both confident and passionate about. She is, as I sometimes like to put it, working from the center of her strength here. It is easy for her to support, elaborate and (if needed) defend these ideas.

Part of her confidence, I would point out, comes from her community of mathematicians. (There is strength in numbers, if you’ll pardon the pun.) She is not saying something that she is afraid she’ll be called out for by her peers. There is not a hint of insecurity or paranoia. But, while this sense that her statements are uncontroversial is important, it is by no means necessary. All that is required for her to know what she is talking about is that she is aware of anything that might be controversial. It is when people assert as certain something that is in question among professionals, or call into question something that is beyond doubt among professionals, that they get onto thin ice. Dr. Stankova is clearly standing on a glacier.

In fact, the video you just watched is just the tip of the iceberg. (Let’s not quibble about the mixed metaphor, but do please remember where icebergs come from.) It has been edited down from a longer session, some of which can be seen here:

Here, too, notice that while you may at times have difficulty keeping up with her proof, you at no point get the sense that she’s just pulling these things out of a hat. Even her drawing skills reveal her as someone who has drawn many triangles. She is good at it. She’s been dealing with triangles her whole life, it seems. She’s familiar with them.

When thinking about your own knowledge try to imagine explaining it under these conditions. Can you speak knowledgeably for five or ten minutes about subjects within your area of expertise? Do you know what you are talking about? What subjects can you talk about from the center of your epistemic strength like this? It’s worth making a list of truths you master at this level.

Scholarly writing is the art of writing down what you know for the purpose of discussing it with other knowledgeable people. To learn how to do it well it you must start with something you know. If you are always trying to discover what you know–or, worse, what the truth in fact is–in the act of writing then you are not practicing the relevant craft. It is like trying to learn how to draw hands without actually looking at a hand and trying to draw it. Start with your own hand. Draw a picture of it. Do it again and again and you will become a better draftsman.

If … the artist finds himself constrained, by any consideration of expression, treatment or style, or by his deference to the peculiar nature and limitations of his tools and materials, to adopt or invent a convention or a symbol and to substitute the semblance of a bunch of bananas or a bent fork for a representation of the human hand, then the particular problem dealt with in this book does not arise. (Oliver Senior, How to Draw Hands)

Writing down what you know is similar in many respects. Many scholars find themselves constrained, let us say, by theoretical considerations that force them to substitute the equivalent of bananas and forks for accurate representations of hands. For them, “writing” is simply stringing together a bunch of conventional symbols, sometimes slightly bent. What they should do is begin with a clear statement of what they know–a simple, declarative sentence they believe is true and can justify in prose. Then they should work for about half an hour crafting a paragraph that supports, elaborates or defends it.

It has become clear to me that I have to spend more energy on this point in my coaching and teaching. This separation of knowing from writing and its careful articulation, i.e., parting and then joining them, cuts against what very many people think they should be doing. Indeed, it’s the opposite of what they’ve been taught to do. Until this point of departure is established, my technique is more likely to obstruct progress than to support it.

The separation of knowing and writing takes discipline. Its basic form is this: Always decide the day before what you are going to write. That is, bring something you know before your mind today and then write about it tomorrow. Let sleep keep them distinct. Also, choose something that you knew already last week. Put a weekend, at least, between your learning process and your writing process, between your research and your paper.

The late Oliver Smithies here says two things that would vastly improve the lives (and minds) of young scholars if they would only believe him: plan your work week, never write something you don’t understand.*

*Obviously, this “never” has to be taken with the usual caveat. It might be better to say don’t try to get something you don’t understand past your reader.

I’m not an ethnographer by any stretch, but I have worked closely with many authors who use ethnographic description in their organisational analyses. On that basis (and you can take it for what it’s worth) I have some advice. It’s something I find myself saying quite often, so I thought I may as well write it down too.

Ethnography covers a wide range of specific methods, but let’s confine ourselves to participant observation and interviews. These are ways of collecting data,  which will consist of descriptions (in field notes) of what people did in practice, and transcriptions (often of recordings) of what they said in interviews. The methods section of the paper will describe how the data was collected, i.e., how the observations were arranged and the interviews conducted, as well as how they were recorded, transcribed and coded.

Now, the ethnographer–the “people writer”, if you will–has the task of presenting this data in the analysis. Many researchers, I have found, construe their data as a text that needs to be somehow processed into publishable prose. They select passages of their notes or transcripts, paste them into a document, and connect them together by writing their own prose. But it is also, for many people, a torturous process, comparable to weeding a magically growing garden that is constantly changing form, blooming and wilting from day to day, as progress and mood dictate. It’s sometimes exciting, but not always pleasant work.

So I usually suggest a different approach. It begins by getting away from thinking of the analysis as primarily a presentation of your data and construing it instead as an attempt to represent the people you have studied. You have observed them doing something, but your analysis will tell us why they did it. They have said something in the interviews, but your analysis will tell us what they meant. You are analyzing the meaning of their practices, not merely telling us what happened.

Instead of beginning with juicy quotes or gripping anecdotes, begin with the claims that your analysis allows you to make about the people you have studied. Tell us what you know about these people, not just what they’ve told you or what you’ve seen them do. Think of claims like the following:

• The managers at XYZ Corp are aloof and distant.
• The local employees perceive their foreign managers as arrogant and out of touch.
• The community places a high premium on quality workmanship.
• The board is frustrated with the inefficiency of the IT department.
• The team leader is taciturn and often dismissive.
• The team members hold their leader in very high esteem.
• There is a great deal of anxiety about the transition.
• The employees are ambivalent about the new strategy.

I could go on. The point is that none of these are statements of direct observation, but we can imagine a paragraph that presents evidence to support each of them. And that evidence will consist of statements of direct observation, drawn from the data. Instead of giving yourself the the task of “presenting the data”, give yourself the task of supporting claims on the basis of your data. That should make it much easier to decide the day before what you are going to say. And that will hopefully make the writing more enjoyable.

Begin in mid-August and count eight weeks to the fall break. There should be another eight-week stretch up to around Christmas. Then count off eight weeks before and eight weeks after Easter. You now have four eight-week periods that cover the whole school year. 32 weeks in all.

Make a rough estimate for each period of how many hours you can devote to writing. Not to thinking or researching, but to actually, physically writing your papers. How many hours will you be “at the machine”, typing? If your estimate is under 20 you are either too busy or not ambitious enough. If it’s over 120 you are probably not thinking straight. You should aim to write between half an hour and three hours every day, five days a week.

Okay, now take your rough estimate for each period and multiply it by two. This gives you the amount a paragraphs you can write (27 minutes at a time). And then go on and multiply this number by 200, which is the maximum amount a words you can write (limiting each paragraph to at most 200 words). Finally, divide this number by 8000, or whatever the standard length of the papers published in your field might be. This gives the amount of full drafts you can write (or rewrite) during each period, i.e., the amount of paper-sized texts you can produce. Now, add it all up and make a table:

I wonder if I need to explain how this might be useful…