Zoë Marriott's Blog, page 2

Lessons Learned at my First Academic Conference

Hello, Dear Readers! Welcome back to An Eddying Flight. This week I'm going to reflect on my attendance at the AHRC Cambridge International Conference back in September, and on what I learned from delivering my first ever conference paper, especially as a non-trad, mature student.

Going in, I was anxious about this conference. Very anxious. In fact, it didn't make all that much sense to be so tense and worried about it: In my old job as a children's and young adult author, I was a veteran of public speaking. I've run well over a hundred creative writing and literacy focussed workshops in schools and libraries, and have spoken to crowds of hundreds of teachers, fellow writers, editors and agents, not to mention readers, at various book festivals, signings and conferences.

Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic, especially coinciding, as it did, with my personal handbrake turn into academia and MA/PhD studies, wiped out most of these opportunities from 2020 onwards. And while I've been I've been to a handful of online conferences since I began my PhD in 2021 - some organised internally by my university, like our semi-regular Gender and Otherness (GOTH) Symposiums, and some by external organisations like the NAWE Conference - I'd not attended any academic conferences in real life... ever.

So I put my nerves leading into the Cambridge Conference down to being out of practice, and to the fact that this was my first presentation of a conference paper (you can read a post on the process I went through to write it here). To try and calm down about it, I reminded myself that this was a doctoral conference, meaning that all the other speakers - except the keynote ones - would be fellow PhD students in the midst of their studies. But, remembering that they came from universities as prestigious and diverse as MIT, the Australian National University, a.r.t.e.s Graduate School of Cologne, and Stockholm University, as well as Oxbridge, this didn't help all that much.

Then came the first day of the conference. A day when I was not due to present anything. A day when all I had to do was say hello to friendly colleagues from my cohort at the Open University, speak fairly sensibly to other students, listen to presentations (including an absolutely wonderful keynote from Professor Samantha Bennett from the Australian National University, who comes from a UK working class background and was a mature student, like me) and attend a free tour of the Fitzwilliam Museum. Despite this lack of pressure, I felt so uncomfortable, tense and out of place that I had two hot flushes. I enjoyed the presentations, but it was a struggle to relax at all.

This was all compounded by the fact that I had put my phone on Do Not Disturb with a single exception: my mother's home phone number. I am her carer, and I had told her that she would be able to get hold of me in an emergency. Sure enough, at the final panel of the day, in the midst of a fascinating presentation, my phone out rang loud and clear. Apologising profusely, but also fearing the worst, I rushed from the room to take the call... and found that the emergency was that my mother's internet had died.

I crept back into the presentation room with the sense that my mortification was complete. Convinced that I must have been nearly incoherent for 75% of the time that I was forced to speak or interact with others, as well as being remembered as That Stupid Woman With the Phone, I was so depressed that at the little restaurant where I dragged myself to eat dinner later on, the waitress, unprompted, brought me free icecream. She said she felt sorry for me.

Why am I so bad at this, I asked myself over and over. I didn't even have to DO anything today, except come across as a vaguely normal human! Surely now my presentation tomorrow will be a disaster!

However, the next day, after dressing and packing up my hotel room, I found that I was in a much calmer frame of mind. I had a few very normal jitters, but I didn't find myself experiencing any hot flushes or stuttering over my words, and when the time came to deliver my conference paper, I was able to do so with a reasonable sense of confidence, as well as participating happily in the Q&A and the discussion that followed. I even felt a bit cheated when I had to rush off to catch the train, instead of being able to continue talking with the other panelists and attendees.

As I made my way home (a journey of five hours or so - plenty of time to think) it occurred to me that the difference between day one and two of the conference, the thing that had tripped me up, was that on day two I had a job to do.

A fairly familiar job, in fact. I was able to focus on doing that in a professional way, and enjoying it as I usually do.

On day one, though? I was really there to be social and network. And as a woman who is just starting the process of getting an official diagnosis of autism, that was always going to be hard for me.

At author events I would turn up, usually right before my event was due to start, don my author personna - a much brighter, more vivacious and confident version of myself - and get to work. If I embarrassed myself in some way, I would overreact in order to make a joke of it, and everyone would think that it was hilarious. The most hardened agents and editors expect writers to be a little eccentric and flakey, but children's authors, who are mainly supposed to be entertaining to young people, can be downright wacky and no one bats an eyelid. The only no-no is being perceived to be unfriendly or standoffish. If you can make people laugh, then most gaffes will be forgiven.

But I haven't got a PhD student personna, or an academic persona. It was just me there, and it's been two years (more!) since just-me interacted in real life with a large group of strangers, a task I've found challenging all my life.

Basically, I realised that the conference was a tiny trial by fire. I'm still getting used to academia, and, like most people, I'm still mentally recovering from two years of lockdown. I'd probably done OK, and beating myself up about anything that didn't go perfectly was pointless.

So, what did I learn from the experience of attending my first IRL academic conference and delivering my first conference paper, other than the fact that passing for normal is exhausting? Well, here goes:

Presentations which don't ostensibly have much connection to your own interests/research will often turn out to be the most fascinating of all. Of course you'll be hunting through your conference programme to find papers which intrigue you and seem relevant to your own work, but if there doesn't seem to be anything in a particular time slot, pick something at random and attend anyway. You may be surprised, enlightened, and delighted. I was. On the other hand, it's important to make space for Me Time. The Cambridge Conference offered various extra activities, but because of travel time and various other factors, several of them were ruled out for me (like punting in the Cam at the end of the last day, when I was already on a speeding train home). Because of this, I felt guilty and I signed up for a museum tour right in the middle of the first day. At lunch beforehand, one of my fellow OU students said quite bluntly that she wasn't coming because she needed some Me Time. How I wish I'd been sensible enough to follow her example! While the tour was actually fascinating, it was also more of the same socialising and information-absorbing which I'd been doing from roughly 8:30 that morning and needed to continue doing until 18:00 that evening. I should have taken some Me Time instead and spent that hour-long timeslot alone somewhere, sorting through my thoughts and impressions from the morning, and most important of all: not talking! Turn your phone completely off, if you can. It's just not worth the embarrassment. I realised later on that, if there had been a real emergency, my mother would not have been able to get any useful assistance from me anyway: I was nearly six hours away! This is one of those really tricky aspects of trying to pursue a career or education when you have caring responsibilities, whether those are for children or other relatives. In the future, I will tell my mother she needs to phone my sister if there's an emergency while I'm away. It might be wise to bring a camera, if you have one. I was too tense to remember to take pictures during this conference during day one, and on day two I firmly turned my phone off anyway. I wish I'd brought my camera so that I could have recorded the occasion of my OU colleagues presenting, and so I could ask them to do the same for me. I'd have had images to use in this post, for one thing! I'm used to the PR and marketing people employed by publishers, or conference organisers, taking photos during events and then tweeting them about and sharing them with me, but this doesn't seem to be a thing at academic conferences. In future I'll remember that if I want images, I'll need to get them myself. Avoid performing the traditional 'Why Won't My PowerPoint Load??' Dance. At every presentation venue from the large lecture hall where the keynote speakers addressed us to the small yet grand room where I delivered my paper, there were problems with the audiovisual equipment. The chairs, despite being distinguished academics from all over the globe, did not know how to fix these, and there was never an IT person to be found. This, it seems, is the traditional dance of the academic conference, taking up at least 10 minutes at the beginning of every panel. As far as I'm aware (since I didn't attend every single session) the only people to completely avoid performing this dance were those presenting on my panel, and this was because myself and my fellow OU PhD Student Rebekah (hi, Rebekah!) had been at a panel presenting the day before in that same room, and had watched those panelists work out how to get their slides to display in real time (and then, because we didn't need him, an IT person also turned up). I know it's really hard to find the time, and you might feel shy about asking, but try, try, try to investigate the place where you will be presenting and work these issues out beforehand. Go easy on yourself. You will probably not manage to network as much as you wished, be as erudite and eloquent as you dreamed, or get to every single panel that interested you. You, along with all the other presenters, including the keynote speakers, will flub and fudge during your presentations. If you're like me, you will probably trip over in front of another person or embarrass yourself in some way, small or large, at least once. This is being human. Isn't it wonderful and terrible? I am still working on this myself, but if you need it, here is permission from me: just turn up, be kind and polite to others, do the best you can at your own small job on the day, and let the rest go. No one else will ever judge your performance as harshly as you do. It's fine.

I hope that this has been helpful for reassuring, Dear Readers! As always, if you have questions, comments or suggestions for future blogposts, just drop me a line in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook. I'm always delighted to hear from you.

Good luck with your conferences!

Thursday Pick & Mix

Hello, and welcome back to An Eddying Flight, Dear Readers! Today's post is coming to you just one day after my return from my first ever in-real-life academic conference, where I presented my first ever conference paper (eeep!).

I've done a post on writing this paper here and I'll probably do a follow-up post discussing my experience at the conference and what I've learned, as a non-traditional/mature student, from delivering a formal presentation, next month. But for the moment, just between you and me? I am exhausted. My brain is goo.

If you, like me, are feeling a tad tuckered out and are perhaps struggling to pick up the threads of work that you needed to lay aside - for professional or personal reasons - then today's Pick & Mix is for you. There is no better way to refresh a tired mind than some pure, joyful creativity. So instead of continuing to stare blankly at a blank page, join us! Take ten minutes out of your day. I can promise that it will be worth it.

A quick reminder of the 'rules' (feel free to cheat, of course, it's whatever works for you):

You own the next ten minutes. Set your timer but don't put it somewhere that you can see it or stress out over it. Pick up your pen, open up your word processing programme. View the waiting blank page as a friend you are about to get to know better.

Pick a prompt. Any prompt. Mix two, or three - or, if something else occurs to you, go with that instead. We are not the prompt police. Do what makes you happy.

Remember not to waste your ten minutes or your imaginative energy editing or revising. Put a piece of paper over the lines as you write them, set your font to the same colour as the page so that it's invisible. We don't care about spelling, awkward phrases, punctuation or typos. Grammar? We don't know her.

When you've finished, save your work, close your notebook - and walk away. You don't need to re-read this writing, assess it, fix it. That's not what it's for. It's about joy, not results. If/when you do read it again, make sure that you do so in a spirit of curiosity and interest, but without expectation. Then, if it turns out to be a deathless piece of prose, that's a lovely bonus.

Got it? Great! Then onto the prompts!

IMAGE

MUSIC

WORDS

Devoted to dogs

Good luck, and may the writing gods speed your words! I wish you joy.

Preparing for (a Humanities) Upgrade & Mini-Viva

Hello, Dear Readers - welcome back to An Eddying Flight! I hope you're all doing wonderfully in this, September, the month of Academia's slow and grinding return to business after the summer break.

Exactly as suggested by the title, today's post will be a recap of my recent experience undergoing my year one upgrade and attending my mini-viva examination. I'm very happy to announce that I passed with no corrections and have officially become a PhD candidate, registered for a doctorate, rather than a PhD student registered for an MPhil. Hurray!

During the run-up to my upgrade I searched for literature and blog posts on this topic to reassure myself - because upgrade, or confirmation of status, or whatever your particular institution may call it, is the first big hurdle that must be successfully leaped on the way to gaining a doctorate, and I was nervous. I was surprised to find suprisingly slim pickings, even online. This might be because this first year ritual is a relatively new one, put in place by more and more universities over the last decade or so to try and avoid candidates crashing out of their PhD at the end, after three or six years of time, effort, and financial investment.

Whatever the reason, there was a paucity of resources, and I had lots of questions which none of the articles or blog posts really answered to my satisfaction (as far as I could find). So I'll try and answer those here, but if there are any more issues you really want to discuss, as always, drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or in the comments below.

So, your upgrade or confirmation of status is approaching. What now?

Well, firstly, you have to get the paperwork sorted. This generally requires a big chunk of writing from you, and not just from the research you've been working on (which you provide to reassure the assessors that your work is of PhD quality) but in the form of other documents associated with actually applying to upgrade to official doctoral candidate status.

In my case, I was required to provide:

A 200 word contexualising statement for my fiction (this was basically a mini-synopsis of the novel I'm working on) 8000 words of creative writing (an extract of the novel) 1500 words of critical writing/research (with its own bibliography) A formal research proposal with an indicative bibliography for thesis as a whole

This list will, of course, vary massively depending on your discipline and institution. Unless you're doing a creative PhD, as I am, it's unlikely most people will be expected to produce two separate samples of writing for their research. You'll probably supply a draft introduction chapter or perhaps a literature review. But as always, the first port of call should be your supervisors (shout out to my wonderful supervisors: I appreciate you! You complete me!).

In my case, my supervisors provided me, not only with this list, but also with a very helpful template for the formal research proposal which showed me exactly what kind of information I needed to provide about my PhD research goals, questions, methodology, etc.

It might seem a little odd to have to provide a research proposal when you're already in the middle of doing the research. Especially when you submitted one of these to get onto your PhD programme in the first place. But this is a really important way of checking in with you: ensuring that you are clear on what you're trying to do, why, and how, and that your research has grown and evolved since your initial application to do a doctorate (as it inevitably will have done, if you're going about it right). This document is far more extensive than the original research proposal, too. My application research proposal was 1500 words not including reference list. The upgrade research proposal came in at nearly 4000, (but that did include the bibliography this time).

Your supervisors should be willing to look at everything you're going to submit as part of this upgrade package, and offer you feedback. Mine gave me pointers to improve both my creative and critical work, pointed out some areas in my bibliography that were lacking, suggested I add a bit more detail on my creative element in the research proposal, and helped unpick various areas of unclear wording. During this period they will hopefully also have selected, approached, and briefed you on the assessors who will be looking at your application for upgrade and conducting your mini-viva, and a date for the mini-viva will be arranged.

Once you've revised your application materials in line with the feedback, you will need to submit them. Some people may be lucky enough to simply be able to email their documents to the correct office. Here at the OU we have to beard the dragon known as 'Post Graduate Research Manager' which is a newly launched website which almost no one really understands, and which, in my case, required me to answer several screens of questions which I hadn't been warned to expect (because, again, no one understands this computer system). There wasn't anything useful in my student handbook either so, after a brief spasm of panic, I needed to go back to one of my supervisors for help with these. In any case, once you've submitted the forms and documents, it's time to start preparing for the mini-viva.

This is the part that makes most of us develop an instant stomach-ache, I know. But it doesn't need to. Honestly.

'Mini-viva' is really a bit of a misnomer. This isn't truly a shorter version of the Viva Voce grilling you're going to have to undergo once you've finished and submitted your thesis. It's much, much nicer and far less formal than that. The point really seems to be to offer an outside perspective on your work at this early stage, offer useful advice and constructive criticism including book recommendations, and get you to think about and articulate less developed areas of the research.

I underwent my mini-viva online, via MS Teams. This was a very good thing, because I also went into it with a 38.8 fever, headache, nasty sore throat, and a persistent cough. A negative Covid-19 test two days earlier had assured me that this was only an unlucky summer cold and so I should surely be able to power through it (Morgan Freeman Voiceover: Dear Readers, it did, of course, turn out to be Covid). But despite this, I genuinely enjoyed the mini-viva. It was effectively a long, wonderful, friendly chat with two super intelligent people (one within my discipine of Creative Writing, and one within the cognate discipline of English Literature) who had read my work with great attention and wanted me to talk about it in great detail. It lasted roughly an hour and if it hadn't been for the sore throat I could happily have kept on for another hour after that.

Of course, this could just be my experience. I am a certified Weird Human, and your assessors and project will obviously be different. But since this is an area that my supervisors, fellow PhD students, and just about every resource I found online also all agree on, I think it's safe to promise you that if your mini-viva is traumatic then something has gone wrong with it. It's not a grilling. It's an opportunity to learn, and you should be able to enjoy it.

How to prepare, then? What kind of questions will they ask and what can you do to get ready?

My biggest tip is to ask one of your supervisors to sit in on your mini-viva and take notes on the discussion. This was recommended to me by the OU Director of Research Degrees at an induction event all the way back in October of 2021 and I'm so glad that I made a note of it. Although your supervisor will absolutely not be allowed to be involved in the mini-viva, having them there is reassuring. And, crucially, although you will be making notes of your own, if you're anything like me you will get excited and miss out huge chunks of what's said. I personally found afterward that I'd written down all the comments and questions from my examiners... but completely failed to record about 80% of what I said in reply. Having my supervisor's objective and complete notes to compare to my own in the aftermath was vital.

In the run-up to the mini-viva, I asked my supervisors if I should re-read some of the books and articles that I'd referenced in my critical work, or try to cram in a lot of new reading. They told me that the examination would be on the work I'd submitted, and the best 'revision' would be to re-read that and invest some time in sustained thought about it.

This was excellent advice. Not only did refreshing my memory help boost my confidence: it gave me the chance to imagine what specific questions these particular sections of work I had submitted might bring up in the minds of my assessors.

I made myself some notecards. Nothing fancy or extensive, just brief bullet-points, key words to prompt me. I wrote these in response to questions I thought the examiners might ask:

How would I summarise the main points of my research? Why have I chosen to do this specific research? Why do I think this research will matter to others? What literature/writers have influenced the creative and critical work the most? What works/authors did I intend to read next? Are there different areas related to the original research that I intend to explore further? How has my research changed since I began working on it?

In the event, because I had already done the thinking I barely needed to glance at my notecards, even when these topics came up. The information was nice and fresh in my mind. In addition, though, the assessors asked me a lot of other questions which pertained very specifically to my writing, and can be summed up in the following headings:

How have other elements (such as fairytale archetypes and the Gothic) shaped the work you're doing? How will you address certain technical challenges (portraying non-linear time, dual narratives) inherent to what you've set out to do in your writing? Can you explain how these two areas of your research (Romantic/Pre-Raphaelite art and writings and theoretical physics) connect to the genre (timeslip) of your creative work? Tell us what kind of scholarship you've found on perceptions of time and your plans to investigate this further? Various detailed questions on the creative and technical choices I'd made/would make in my creative work and why, and how I saw these playing out.

I was surprised by how deeply the discussion went into my creative work, because I'd expected to have to defend my critical writing much more (my supervisors had said this would likely be the case, but I'm still insecure about research and academic writing, so that's what preyed on my mind). But I didn't find that the examiners asked me anything that I, as the author of the work they were responding to, wouldn't have been expected to be able to answer. They certainly made me think; they didn't in any way attempt to make me panic or curl into the fetal position!

It seems to me that the best prep for the mini-viva is to re-read the work you've submitted with the most objective eyes possible and imagine what questions you would ask if you were going to be examining this upgrade.

What areas would intrigue you, or tempt you to dig in further? Where would you point out things that hadn't fully been explained or explored? Can you see the potential for the research to move in new directions, or would you recommend further reading?

Even if the specific questions you've envisaged don't crop up in the mini-viva, the time and effort spent in deep reflection about your work will pay you back in terms of confidence and eloquence on the day.

Now that my first full academic year as a Post Graduate Researcher is complete, and my upgrade and mini-viva are behind me, I have a sense of security and fulfilment in my PhD journey that I didn't before. I've defended my research (however informally) for the first time, and at some level this has helped me to accept that it, and I, belong here. I hope your experience with this academic milestone will be just as positive. I wish you the very best of luck!

Thursday Pick & Mix

Hello, Dear Readers, and welcome back to the blog - and to Thursday Pick & Mix! It's been a while, hasn't it? I hope you're ready for a low-stress, low-pressure creativity kickstart that is specifically designed to reconnect writers to their artistic joy. I know I am.

The Rules:

You own the next ten minutes. This is You Time. No guilt, no pressure, no anxiety, just fun. Set your timer, pick up your pen or open up your word processing programme, and look at the inviting blank page with anticipation.

Pick a prompt, any prompt - or two, or three - or, if something else occurs to you, go with that instead. Whatever makes you want to write. Whatever helps you to experience that spark of creative joy.

Don't waste your creative spark on second-guessing yourself. Put a piece of paper over the lines as you write them, or set your font to the same colour as the page so that it's invisible. Who cares about spelling, grammar, awkward phrases, punctuation or typos? They don't matter. Creativity matters.

When you've finished, walk away. You don't need to rush to re-read this writing, assess it, or fix it. That's not what it's for. It's about joy, not results.

The Prompts:

IMAGE

MUSIC

WORDS

"In that darkness, that greater darkness, she had not known that she had lost her way, that her balance was gone, had not even understood she was falling, until it was already too late."

Happy writing! I wish you joy.

How to Write a (Humanities) Conference Paper

Hello, Dear Readers - welcome back to An Eddying Flight.

Firstly, my apologies that the blog has been a little quieter than usual in the last couple of months. As I said in a previous post, I was scheduled for surgery in June. I also had my PhD upgrade and mini-viva (which I will blog about in detail another time) booked for July. In between the surgery and the mini-viva I managed to catch Covid for the third time (despite being vaccinated and boosted) which meant I completed said viva with a fever of 38.8, an achievement which feels much more impressive in retrospect. At the time, I mainly wanted to curl up under a pile of blankies and expire quietly.

And then - much more seriously - my mother caught Covid too, and because she's a pensioner with multiple health conditions, she was hospitalised with complications. Although she's back home and doing better now, I admit that the summer so far has left me feeling frazzled - which is why when I got the email telling me that my abstract had been accepted and I was going to present my first ever academic conference paper at my first ever academic conference (the AHRC Cambridge International Conference) my main reaction was... terror? Yes, terror.

Apparently public speaking is the most common phobia of all, but oddly enough I'm not really bothered by that. I started doing school visits (counts on fingers) ooh, let's just say a bit longer than a decade ago now, and when I started out the schools seemed to consider me as a particularly cheap supply teacher onto whom they could dump any old skut-work they didn't want. Once you - with no teaching qualifications or experience, and charging only £30 for a two hour creative writing workshop - have been shoved into a room with a group of kids with behavioural difficulties, provided with only three and a half dictionaries (one had been ripped in two and the other half was missing), a heap of broken pencils that needed sharpening and some already used paper and left alone there (yep, I'm serious) until the bell rang two hours later... well, you either go and herd yaks deep in the forbidden mountains so you never have to face another human being again, or you adjust.

I'm not saying that I don't get nerves; I definitely do. I've done panel events and presentations and workshops up and down the country, some of them to hundreds of children/readers or as many publishing professionals at a time. I get the sweaty palms every time. But it's not something which gives me nightmares anymore.

But this, Dear Readers... this was different. Because I've never written a conference paper before. Having written the abstract mostly as an exercise in summarising my research, and submitted it convinced that it obviously would not be selected, I experienced complete panic when I realised I was going to have to put my money where my abstract was.

It's a very different thing to attend a few online academic conferences and happily watch other people do presentations than to know how to actually put together something so entirely new to you yourself - and remember, I don't have an academic background (although I do have a giant chip on my shoulder).

What even is a conference paper? How long are they supposed to be? Do you have to do slides? How many slides?

Well, the conference is coming up in September and I'm happy to say that I have managed to pull something together, something which I feel quite proud of, in fact. I will most likely post again about what it is really like to present my research to an audience of my peers and what I learn from that after I've (hopefully) survived it, but I thought that it might be useful for anyone who is similarly paralysed if I shared my big takeaways on writing a conference paper (for beginners!) now.

The most important thing is that obviously your first port of call if/when freaking out about writing a conference paper should always be your supervisor/s. Mine offered me sensible and useful advice that helped to calm me down immensely. One of them also offered to let me practice on them before the conference via Zoom call, and I think that's going to be really invaluable.

So, with thanks to them - and to the videos of Dr Andy Stapleton, Dr Lucy Kissick, and the legend Dr Tara Brabazon, from whom many of these insights are adapted - what information would I, a newbie academic with quite a lot of public speaking experience and a conference paper so fresh that the ink is still metaphorically wet, like to share with other panicking newbie conference paper-writers, based on the fact that I somehow managed to push through my terror and actually produce something which I'm now excited to present?

Most conference papers are supposed to be used to present either an overview of your research or a deeper look at one smaller aspect of it. That's what should be in there: enough information to get the key points of your research across, or make a really good argument for just one key point.

Conference papers are generally about 15-20 minutes long. Depending on how quickly you talk, that's around 2500-3500 words. I don't think there's any law that you must use slides - if you're a really confident speaker who can keep an audience spellbound, or very nervous with technology then you may be better off without them. Some people say that you should have one slide per minute of your talk. Some say that when presenting online you should use even more than that. Again, there are no hard and fast rules.

Except for the ones I'm about to get into below, which you must obviously observe on pain of death (kidding, these are suggestions):

Don't be afraid to get click-baity. Try to come up with a title that is arresting, familiar, eye-catching, even funny or a little shocking. I know this is academia, but academic people are still people. If you want their attention, you need to grab it. Once you do, you can use your subtitle to offer description and context. For instance: 'ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES & OTHER FAIRY STORIES: How B-Movies Attain Cult Status Through Archetypes'; or perhaps 'LAST NIGHT I DREAMT I WENT TO MANDERLEY AGAIN: The 20th Century Female Writer, the Gothic, and Feminist Struggle in Dream Imagery'. Start out strong. Begin your paper by summing up the story of your research in a way that will engage the listeners in everything that is to come. This might be a relatable personal anecdote about what inspired the research, or a bold statement of the one key idea that you want the listeners to take away. Tell them why they're here: why your research matters. Anchor your listeners verbally within the talk. If your paper is in three parts, or you have two important concepts to touch on and bring together by the end, make sure you tell your listeners this: it helps them to orientate themselves and keep track of where the talk is going. At the simplest level, you could say: 'Remember this concept, I will be returning to it later on', or 'And this brings us to the final section of my paper...'. Slides are a visual aid to the conference paper - they are not the conference paper itself. Don't use your slides as your auto-cue. Attendees are there to see a person deliver a paper. They are not there to have a Powerpoint presentation read to them, verbatim. Too much information on the slides is likely to be visually unappealing and messy, and if you're focusing on the slides and not the audience, your talk will struggle to interest and involve them. The best idea is to make the slides image heavy and stick to one key quote or three or four short bullet points per slide. If you're using charts or data, make sure that these are visually striking, easy to read and - this goes for all slides! - that you interpret the information for the audience in a way that shows the depth of your knowledge. The slides support the talk. You GIVE the talk. Your voice is your instrument. Speak slowly. Breathe deeply. Pause frequently and allow what you say to sink in before moving on to the next paragraph or slide. Do not be afraid of silence. If, like me, you talk veeery fast when you are tense, you are going to have to practice this a lot, but you might find that once you've found a slower pace of speaking, it actually helps to calm you down as you move through the information you want to share. Which leads us neatly onto... Aim for Carnegie Hall. Practice. Practice a lot. Time yourself doing this and if you can't give the paper in the allotted minutes every single time, or can't do it without rushing, then cut the paper down. There are always technical difficulties somewhere, or someone else running over: you want to be the person whose talk ends either exactly on time or even a couple of minutes early. And when you're sure that delivering the talk in the perfect amount of time will be a piece of cake? Practice some more. The slides are useful for reminding you what's coming up next, and most of us are going to need to glance at our notes occasionally, but the closer you can get to word perfect - the more time you can spend looking directly at the audience, engaging with them - the more everyone there will enjoy it. Back yourself. This one comes staight from Dr Tara Brabazon and, on my part, is especially aimed at us ladies. You, like me, may have spent many years attempting to make people like you by being self-deprecating and 'grateful', amusing everyone with funny stories about your own flakiness or misadventures, and ensuring that you never sound like you take yourself too seriously or think you're cleverer than anyone else. The sheepish laugh may be your stock in trade. You may pepper your speech and your written communications with anxious little phrases like: 'Sorry, hope that makes sense!' and 'Is this OK, let me know if not,' But Tara Brabazon, the legend, says: Back yourself. Make the decision to be a confident, composed, compelling academic communicator. You don't owe it to anyone to play down your cleverness, and you do owe it to yourself to go out there and lay claim to the work that you've done. If other people feel threatened by your cleverness, that is no one's problem but theirs. Stand up there and be proud of what you've achieved. Back yourself.

Providing my world doesn't explode (again) I ought to be back later this month with a new Pick & Mix and I hope you'll join me for that. If you have any reactions, requests or deep philosophical thoughts to share, please drop me a line in the comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter.

Six & 1/2 Things I learned in my first Six-ish Months as a PhD Student

Hello, Dear Readers, and welcome! Today on An Eddying Flight I'm going to go through some things I've figured out over the exhilarating, terrifying, stimulating and surprising first six months (and a bit) of being a full-time PhD student in Creative Writing at the Open University.

Supervisors are Key. Every article or blogpost or book that offers advice on how to get a PhD tells you this, but I'm here to say: they are not kidding, sunshine. Having the right supervisors, not just for your project but for you personally, is even more important than you think it's going to be. If you're applying for places on existing research projects, please, please try to make the time to contact the supervisors for a chat so you can get a feel for who they are. Don't pick someone just because they're a big name or have the right keywords in their publications or they have a lot of money following them around; yes, this is a professional relationship, but if you can't stand them or feel that they can't stand you then the next three to six years are going to be, to put it bluntly, miserable. And if you're like me and are proposing your own research project, do not be fooled into thinking that, given that your work will be more self-directed, your choice of supervisors is any less vital. You might think that getting the funding you need is more important, and that you'll work anywhere with anyone so long as that's in place, or that ultimately you can do an end-run around unhelpful or distant supervisors the way you might a bad boss, so it doesn't really matter who's supervising you. It doesn't work that way. You NEED your supervisors. Especially in the first months when you are establishing yourself, but also at every key stage in your PhD, any time when you feel unsure, or are going through things as a researcher or in your personal life. They are everything to you. Working with them can and should be one of the best parts of the PhD experience; you should feel that they both challenge and reassure you, that they're constantly pushing you to do better but also willing to help you get to the answers, and that they're genuinely there for you. I've already heard some fairly nightmareish stories from people I know about how their supervisors have dismissed or crushed them, and it just makes me shudder. I am so grateful for the team I have. Start your bibliography or reference list NOW. Yes - now, right now. And make sure the references are in the right format. Yes, all of them - even if you have to spend half a morning figuring that out. And update it DAILY. I mean it! You are going to save your future self - whether that is two-weeks-in-the-future or two-years-in-the-future - so many migraines and ulcers. Get into the habit of reading and writing at the same time as soon as possible. It will make the world of difference in how your reading, writing and skills as a researcher will progress. It will also make you feel much more in control of your research right from the beginning, and help you retain so much more information. And you'll spend a lot less time trying not to nod off, trust me. More (much more) detailed information on how to set up this dynamic can be found here. Don't be afraid to skim-read, or abandon unhelpful papers or books unfinished. This one was - and is - a real toughie for me, because I am the kind of person who is just... weirdly compelled to read everything super-thoroughly. I get a guilt complex and become convinced that I must have missed vital information if I skip so much as a paragraph. But I am working on it because a huge part of being a PhD student is learning what NOT to read. None of us have loads of time to waste reading content that isn't truly useful 'just in case'. The fact is that even if a book or paper has a title/abstract or keywords that promise to be perfectly relevant to your research, that doesn't mean it will. And even if it is relevant, sometimes it still won't be helpful. Sometimes the author is a really bad writer who puts you to sleep no matter how hard you try. Sometimes it turns out they're covering stuff you already know. Sometimes there just isn't anything in there that lights you up or makes sense to you in terms of your own research questions. You're not obligated to give 100% intense focus to everything you've picked up, and having skim-read a few pages, you are allowed to say 'OK, this isn't helpful' and put it down. And just in case you don't believe me, here's a very helpful video from a history PhD student at Yale going through all the different ways that she reads/skim-reads for different results . Develop a work-life balance. Don't just expect it to happen on its own because it won't. What will happen instead is that you will (of course) need to have time for both work and personal life, but you will feel constantly guilty and stressed out about this fact. When you're working you will feel guilty that you're not spending time with family or doing the laundry. And when you're doing the laundry or spending time with family, you will feel anxious that you are not working. Honestly - why do this to yourself? There needs to be space in your schedule to have fun and look after yourself and the things that are important to you that are not your PhD - like hobbies, pets, family and friends, exercise, leaving your house and looking at grass and clouds - as well as to encompass unexpected life events that may reduce your research/reading/writing time. If your plan for completing your PhD over the next 3-6yrs relied on you working literally every hour you have, seven days a week, then the moment you get sick or something explodes in your relationship or your landlord gives you three months notice that they're turning your flat into an AirBnB (Curse you, AirBnB - curse you and your life-ruining business-model) you will not only be behind with your work - you will also have to deal with the crushing weight of guilt and anxiety which makes every situation worse... and why? Because you have a life, like every other graduate student out there! Work five to six days a week at most, set yourself reasonable hours each day and stick to them, and allow yourself to actually enjoy personal time. I give you permission! Learn the art of saying 'no'. Lots of training, academic events and socialising opportunities look genuinely important, or fun and interesting. You may feel both internal and external pressure to make the absolute most of this unique time as a PGR (I know I do) and pack in as much stuff as possible, taking advantage of every opportunity that is offered. But only a certain amount of that stuff is actually vital: what is always vital is your research. The moment that attending this research group seminar or connecting with this cohort of fellow PGRs or doing this training course starts to feel like it is impinging on your ability to dedicate sustained thought to your own work and progress it, it has become unhelpful. I know people want you there and you feel guilty responding with a 'no' instead of a 'yes' or 'maybe' but you need to grit your teeth and do it. The more you say no, the easier it will be to do going forward, and - amazingly - the easier it will become to say yes to PGR activities that you genuinely do want and need to do.

And a half:

You already know this, but I have to say it because you may know it without believing it: you will probably feel better if you reduce your caffeine intake a bit and drink more water. I'm not trying to wrest anyone's morning latte or PG Tips from their hand (mainly because if anyone tries to wrest mine off me they will lose their hand). But a couple of cups of tea or coffee a day is a very different thing to four or five or more that you have to have just to feel like you can keep going. De-caf and alternatives like Rooibos are a thing, and they are delicious - and your brain doesn't actually need constant chemical stimulation to allow you to focus. In fact, your brain does much better without those things, long-term. Plus, life in general becomes much more pleasant when you're not walking around with a permanant dehydration headache and the shakes. Just sayin'.

I hope this was helpful or at least amusing, Dear Readers - and if you've got any revelations of your own that you'd like to share, please do comment over on Facebook or Twitter, or down below.

Six 1/2 Things I learned in my first Six-ish Months as a PhD Student

Hello, Dear Readers, and welcome! Today on An Eddying Flight I'm going to go through some things I've figured out over the exhilarating, terrifying, stimulating and surprising first six months (and a bit) of being a full-time PhD student in Creative Writing at the Open University.

Supervisors are Key. Every article or blogpost or book that offers advice on how to get a PhD tells you this, but I'm here to say: they are not kidding, sunshine. Having the right supervisors, not just for your project but for you personally, is even more important than you think it's going to be. If you're applying for places on existing research projects, please, please try to make the time to contact the supervisors for a chat so you can get a feel for who they are. Don't pick someone just because they're a big name or have the right keywords in their publications or they have a lot of money following them around; yes, this is a professional relationship, but if you can't stand them or feel that they can't stand you then the next three to six years are going to be, to put it bluntly, miserable. And if you're like me and are proposing your own research project, do not be fooled into thinking that, given that your work will be more self-directed, your choice of supervisors is any less vital. You might think that getting the funding you need is more important, and that you'll work anywhere with anyone so long as that's in place, or that ultimately you can do an end-run around unhelpful or distant supervisors the way you might a bad boss, so it doesn't really matter who's supervising you. It doesn't work that way. You NEED your supervisors. Especially in the first months when you are establishing yourself, but also at every key stage in your PhD, any time when you feel unsure, or are going through things as a researcher or in your personal life. They are everything to you. Working with them can and should be one of the best parts of the PhD experience; you should feel that they both challenge and reassure you, that they're constantly pushing you to do better but also willing to help you get to the answers, and that they're genuinely there for you. I've already heard some fairly nightmareish stories from people I know about how their supervisors have dismissed or crushed them, and it just makes me shudder. I am so grateful for the team I have. Start your bibliography or reference list NOW. Yes - now, right now. And make sure the references are in the right format. Yes, all of them - even if you have to spend half a morning figuring that out. And update it DAILY. I mean it! You are going to save your future self - whether that is two-weeks-in-the-future or two-years-in-the-future - so many migraines and ulcers. Get into the habit of reading and writing at the same time as soon as possible. It will make the world of difference in how your reading, writing and skills as a researcher will progress. It will also make you feel much more in control of your research right from the beginning, and help you retain so much more information. And you'll spend a lot less time trying not to nod off, trust me. More (much more) detailed information on how to set up this dynamic can be found here. Don't be afraid to skim-read, or abandon unhelpful papers or books unfinished. This one was - and is - a real toughie for me, because I am the kind of person who is just... weirdly compelled to read everything super-thoroughly. I get a guilt complex and become convinced that I must have missed vital information if I skip so much as a paragraph. But I am working on it because a huge part of being a PhD student is deciding what to read and what NOT to read. None of us have loads of time to waste reading things that aren't useful 'just in case'. The fact is that even if a book or paper has a title or abstract or keywords that seem to promise content which is perfectly relevant to your research, that doesn't mean it will. And even if it is relevant, sometimes it still won't be helpful. Sometimes the author is a really bad writer who puts you to sleep no matter how hard you try. Sometimes it turns out they're covering stuff you already know. Sometimes there just isn't anything in there that lights you up or makes sense to you in terms of your own research questions. You're not obligated to give 100% intense focus to everything you've picked up, and having skim-read a few pages, you are allowed to say 'OK, this isn't helpful' and put it down. And just in case you don't believe me, here's a very helpful video from a history PhD student at Yale going through all the different ways that she reads/skim-reads for different results . Develop a work-life balance. Don't just expect it to happen on its own because it won't. What will happen instead is that you will need to have time for both work and personal life, but you will feel constantly guilty and stressed out about this fact. When you're working you will feel guilty that you're not spending time with family or doing the laundry. And when you're doing the laundry or spending time with family, you will feel anxious that you are not working. Honestly - why do this to yourself? There needs to be space in your schedule to have fun and look after yourself and the things that are important to you that are not your PhD - like hobbies, pets, family and friends, exercise, leaving your house and looking at grass and clouds - as well as to encompass unexpected life events that may reduce your research/reading/writing time. If your plan for completing your PhD over the next 3-6yrs relied on you working literally every hour you have, seven days a week, then the moment you get sick or something explodes in your relationship or your landlord gives you three months notice that they're turning your flat into an AirBnB (Curse you, AirBnB - curse you and your life-ruining business-model) you will not only be behind with your work but you will have figure out how to fix that while also being crushed by the weight of guilt and anxiety which makes every situation worse... and why? Because you have a life, like every other graduate student out there? Work five to six days a week at most, set yourself reasonable hours each day and stick to them, and allow yourself to actually enjoy personal time. I give you permission! Learn the art of saying 'no'. Lots of training, academic events and socialising opportunities look genuinely important, or fun and interesting. You may feel both internal and external pressure to make the absolute most of this unique time as a PGR (I know I do) and pack in as much stuff as possible, taking advantage of every opportunity that is offered. But only a certain amount of that stuff is actually vital: what is always vital is your research. The moment that attending this research group seminar or connecting with this cohort of fellow PGRs or doing this training course starts to feel like it is impinging on your ability to dedicate sustained thought to your own work and progress it, it has become unhelpful. I know people want you there and you feel guilty responding with a 'no' instead of a 'yes' or 'maybe' but you need to grit your teeth and do it. The more you say no, the easier it will be to do going forward, and - amazingly - the easier it will become to say yes to PGR activities that you genuinely do want and need to do.

And a half:

You already know this, but I have to say it because you may know it without believing it: you will probably feel better if you reduce your caffiene intake a bit and drink more water. I'm not trying to wrest anyone's morning latte or PG Tips from their hand (mainly because it anyone tries to wrest mine off me they will lose their hand). But a couple of cups of tea or coffee a day is a very different thing to four or five or more that you have to have just to feel like you can keep going. De-caf and alternatives like Rooibos are a thing, and they are delicious - and your brain doesn't actually need constant chemical stimulation to allow you to focus. In fact, your brain does much better without those things, long-term. Plus, life in general becomes much more pleasant when you're not walking around with a permanant dehydration headache and the shakes. Just sayin'.

I hope this was helpful or at least amusing, Dear Readers - and if you've got any revelations of your own that you'd like to share, please do comment over on Facebook or Twitter, or down below.

Royal Literary Fund Podcast - "The North Star"

Hello, Dear Readers! Welcome back to An Eddying Flight, where this week I have a podcast for you from the Royal Literary Fund's Writers Aloud series. I absolutely loved writing and voicing this (and especially working with lovely Amanda, who recorded it) and I think it turned out really well.

The first part of the podcast is by a writer called Marcy Kahan; she talks about how she fell into the business of playwriting manuals, which is fascinating especially for anyone who has dabbled or would like to dabble in writing for the stage. The second half is mine. I talk about how my understanding of my characters is central to creating a fully realised imaginative world, like a Northern Star by which I navigate.

My section of the podcast starts at roughly 15.15, if you want to go there directly (but do try Marcy's part as well, if the topic's appealing to you).

A quick note: as of this blogpost I've recently had surgery and will be recovering for a couple of weeks, so it's possible that I won't have the spoons to write a Thursday Pick & Mix for June. If your need is great, you could always go back and revisit previous Creativity Kickstarts that you may have missed, but in any case, Pick & Mix will return in July following my (hopefully successful!) PhD upgrade and mini-viva. I might blog about the upgrade/confirmation of status process later on; you can let me know on FB or Twitter if you're interested in learning more about it.

Thursday Pick & Mix (#11)

Hello, Dear Readers! Welcome back to An Eddying Flight and to Thursday Pick & Mix. I hope you're all doing well - nay, brilliantly - this week, and ready to seek new writing joy.

But if not? If the state of our world right now makes you feel trapped, furious, frustrated, hopeless or just empty? If your own life is full of unanswerable questions, packed diaries, fears about the future or personal grief? If it seems too much to ask for any kind of joy amidst the daily challenges you and your friends, family and loved ones are facing? Please, know that there should, there must, still be room for creativity and joy: not as a responsibility but as a right. You are human, and humanity (as Terry Pratchett tells us) is where the falling angel meets the leaping ape. We are made of stories, and we are made of stars. We can't allow ourselves to forget that. When we're at our lowest - individually and as a species - is when we most desperately need and deserve the pure light that creavity can bring to us. So please take this time for yourself, just ten minutes. Write something. Write something strange, funny, incomprehensible, profound or weird. Just write. Write anything and experience joy.

A quick rundown of the 'rules' (with the proviso that you feel free to break them if you really want to):

Pick a prompt, any prompt: You can react to one of these, or all of them - that's why it's called Pick & Mix. Write for ten minutes. But please don't make this a source of stress. If you're an anxious clock-checker like me then set a timer and put the timer out of sight (but in earshot). Don't edit while you're writing. Yes, it takes some getting used to, but do you really want to waste this small, indulgent moment of creative joy on worrying about semi-colons or pluperfects? Nope. If writing longhand, put your palm or a piece of paper over the lines as you scribble them. If writing onscreen, set the font to the same colour as the page so that it's invisible. Don't stop. Just write. Just write. Once your ten minutes are up, give yourself the gift of walking away. Don't force yourself to read what you've written. Don't immediately start assessing it for value or mistakes or trying to 'fix' it. Put it aside, leave it as long as you can - long enough that you might remember it later on with a little blink of surprise and pleasure. The point of Pick & Mix is not to be 'productive' it's to experience joy. If no one ever reads your ten minute scribbles, it doesn't matter one tiny single bit.

Got it? Great! Onto the prompts:

IMAGE

MUSIC

WORDS

"Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in, year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on."

Write like the wind, Dear Readers! I wish you joy.

The Structure of an Argument

Hello, Dear Readers and welcome back to An Eddying Flight!

Today I wanted to share some thoughts about how to get started with academic writing and make it easier. These thoughts are based mainly on my wonderful experience as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow from 2017-2019, when I was lucky enough to work at York St. John University. This was hands-down, without a doubt, my favourite job I've ever had (being a full-time doctoral student is already rivalling it, though) and was a vital factor in my decision to return to education to pursue my MA and then my PhD.

The job of an RLF Fellow is primarily to help students - in every subject area and at every level, from BA to Doctoral - improve their academic writing skills. Because of my own background and the fact that at that point my highest academic qualification was GCSEs, I went into this job feeling really apprehensive. What if students came to me to ask esoteric academic questions that I simply didn't know the answers to? My RLF colleagues reassured me that the point of an RLF Fellow was not to be an academic expert, but to bring their own skills as a writer and researcher (because writers are almost all excellent reseachers; it comes with the territory) to the table. We were there to show students different ways of thinking about language and the written word, and help them to articulate and effectively communicate their ideas.

My colleagues, bless them, were right. Although I sometimes had to do a bit of hasty Googling to prepare for specific queries (the referencing rabbit-hole really did go all the way down) I found that knowledge I already had - whether that was how to correctly use a semi-colon, how to write both formally and readably at the same time, or different ways to efficiently plan out a long piece of written work - and my ability to convey it simply and practically was exactly what most of my students required.

Over the course of my years as a Fellow, though, a definite theme emerged. Students certainly came to me with all kinds of questions and concerns, but at some point, especially with return customers, I nearly always found myself asking them: "What are you trying to say here? What is your point? What is the message that you want your reader to take away from your work?"

A lot of students found this a very hard question to answer. They had been sent off to write a thousand or three thousand words on a particular topic and the way they conceptualised this was to read about said topic and then regurgitate all they had learned onto the page. The idea that it was important to have a point of their own, an argument or a response to what they had learned embedded in their writing - that the point of an essay wasn't simply to produce a block of words - was not only foreign, but pretty frightening. They would look at their pages of notes or their carefully composed paragraphs and realise that there was no 'point'. So now what?

(Usually panic, unfortunately).

As a result of seeing this issue so often - and as a way of quelling panic - I came up with what I called the IDEA Formula:

My aim with this diagram was to help students visualise the construction of an argument, to show them the way that a 'point' could be built within academic writing. This isn't to say that everyone has to think or write like this all the time - and indeed, I personally know some academic writing specialists who probably cringe at the very sight of things like this. But it helped my students. Really, really helped them: they loved it. And I think any device which can bring a panicking student back from the edge of tears to a positive headspace in one session must be worth something. Additionally, I was informed that this helped a fairly large proportion of those panicking students to improve their marks significantly in a short amount of time.

With my students I would pick out a few of their paragraphs and apply the theory to them. I'd teach them that every paragraph in their essay should have a structure and that the best structure would go something like this. I: At the beginning of each piece of writing you IDENTIFY your thesis, your theme, your central argument or idea. In a small unit of writing, like a paragraph, this means you should offer a topic sentence that states what you are about to discuss; set the reader's expectation of your next few sentences. D: Expand on this initial sentence, claifying and adding more DETAIL. E: Provide EVIDENCE which backs up and illustrates your argument or idea - this usually comes in the form of references. A: This final sentence or sentences offers ANALYSIS, your own unique interpretation of the evidence you have provided, and links that back to your thesis argument or central idea.

You start out broad and general - at the widest part of the triangle - and with each new line in the paragraph you get more and more specific until you reach your point - the literal point of the triangle. That's key. Everything must always be relevant to your point. Everything must always be driving down towards the ultimate idea of the piece of writing, proving your thesis, convincing your reader of that message. If it doesn't do this? It shouldn't be in the essay.

After providing this diagram to my students, we would highlight the different parts of the triangle - I, D, E and A - in different colours, then seek out each of the different parts in each paragraph of their essay. Once we started highlighting the work itself, it immediately became clear to the student themselves where something had gone wrong. Often, as I've said above, they didn't have a central message or thesis at all, and then we'd go away and brainstorm that. But where students did have an idea of what the point of their essay was, going through this process helped them to clarify it for themselves and understand how to articulate it on the page.

Sometimes, especially with female students, you'd see paragraphs with great writing that ran smoothly from identifying their topic, to adding detail, definition and background, to illustrating with evidence, references and quotes... and then completely failed because they'd been too self-effacing to actually state their opinion or offer any analysis at the end. Other students hid their A in the middle, or failed to offer any I, or didn't back up the I and A with enough D and E.

The reason I tend to think the IDEA formula worked so well was because it could be extended to encompass the structure of a whole essay (apologies for my artwork here, I never had time to make a digital version of these):

The only exception to the the upside-down-triangle structure would come in the final paragraph or conclusion to a piece of work - where we'd find what I always called The Fishtail (yes, I like naming things, as expected of a speculative fiction author) which inverted the triangle and structure of the IDEA formula. Instead of starting general and getting more specific, you would begin specifically, by summarising the point you'd made, then run over the evidence used, and finally briefly outline the wider implications of the argument and the point of the essay. You can see it The Fishtail at the end of the diagram above, and in the diagram below where I also make the point that introduction and conclusion must mirror each other:

Now again, I know there are many other ways to think about structure and the construction of arguments than this! And I completely acknowledge that the more confident anyone becomes in their writing, the less likely they are to have to stick to any kind of formula or structure at all. But I do still think this is a really useful way to kickstart yourself if you're struggling to get started with academic writing and are feeling intimidated by the idea of building arguments or even planning out a piece of writing that has a central thesis.

Do you agree? Would you use the IDEA formula or something similar, maybe at your outlining stages? Let me know what you think over on Twitter or Facebook!