Generative Writing
How to make the first draft of your research paper.
11 min
peer
getting started
writing
students
faculty
| Abstract |
Writing isn’t a summative process. You don’t do all the work and then “write it up”. The act of writing suggests new experiments to run, reveals holes in your argument to fill with literature or analysis, and helps you communicate with your co-authors. Because writing helps you think (perhaps painfully), it is a generative process: it generates ideas.
To take advantage of writing’s generative properties, you need to write all throughout the production of research. You need to write frequently and copiously. If you hold the mindset of writing as a generative process, you will find many opportunities to write in the natural course of your work. |