At several stages during your PhD, you will have periods with lots of writing. Many struggle with writing efficiently and do not feel competent about their writing skills. We continue our successful virtual writing retreat in October to create a community for those who want to get motivated to write and get their writing done.
The virtual writing space will be filled with useful activities like:
- Lectures on writing skills
- Daily brain warm-up exercises
- Shut-up-and-write sessions
- Small discussion group meetings
We will begin with some short lectures about using the active voice, cutting clutter, and ensuring our writing flows. Several of you may have heard the lectures before, but they will hopefully refresh your memories. We will also have new exercises each day for the daily brain warm-up sessions to hone our skills. Twice a week, we will “shut-up-and-write” for 2 hours and then get together to discuss progress. Finally, the group feedback sessions will allow you to express your writing challenges and get useful feedback from your peers.
Just like a “normal” writing retreat, participants will also have time to work on their own texts/articles/essays. Hopefully you are working on or planning something that you can bring to the seminar. If you are not writing anything specific, don’t worry! Mathew will work with you to ensure that you can put his tips and advice into action.
Registration
Contact DEEP for more information: post-deep@geo.uio.no
Initial timetable
Week 1 (12th -16th October)
Monday
0900-1100: Welcome, active voice and cutting the clutter.
Tuesday
0900-0945: Warm-up exercises
0945-1115: Lecture and discussion on structure + flow
1115-1145: Discussion and introduction to Shut-up-and-write
Wednesday
0900-0945: Warm-up exercises
0945-1145: Shut-up-and-write session
1145-1230: Feedback discussion
1330-1430: Group feedback meetings
Thursday
0900-1100: Invited lecture by another writing expert
Friday
0900-0945: Warm-up exercises
0945-1145: Shut-up-and-write session
1145-1230: Feedback discussion
1330-1500: Group feedback meetings
Week 2 and 3 (19th – 30th October)
Both weeks will follow a similar schedule to this. Times during these weeks often change slightly since participants can influence what we discuss in the morning sessions. Activities like flow analysis and peer-review often take a little longer:
Monday
0900-1000: Warm-up session and discussion
1330-1430: Group feedback meetings
Tuesday
0900-1000: Warm-up exercises
1000-1200: Shut-up-and-write session
1200-1230: Feedback discussion
Wednesday
0900-1000: Warm-up session and discussion
1330-1430: Group feedback meetings
Thursday
0900-1000: Warm-up exercises
1000-1200: Shut-up-and-write session
1200-1230: Feedback discussion
Friday
0900-1000: Warm-up session and discussion
1330-1430: Group feedback meetings
Location
All activities will take place on Zoom so please make sure you’ve signed up to the free version (at least), or maybe you have an account through your university.
The room invitations will be sent on email - but if you have any questions on how to join, please contact post-deep@geo.uio.no.
The instructor
Mathew Stiller-Reeve has a PhD in Meteorology and has published several peer-reviewed articles on the monsoon as well as interdisciplinary and communication issues. He founded the SciSnack writing group community in 2012 and helped start several writing groups around the world. He and 12 international co-authors published their collaborative writing process in 2016, and since then it has been used by summer schools and communication initiatives around the world. Recently, he has become a Thematic Editor of the Geoscience Communication journal and has developed a peer-review process that he recently published on Nature.com. He has held writing seminars and courses over the past 4 years, both in Norway and internationally. Mathew puts emphasis on how we apply basic writing skills to our academic writing, and not least, how we can improve our writing together!