The Write Idea

I’m thrilled to introduce you all to our guest blogger, Dr Danica Sims. Danica recently completed her PhD in the Department of Health Science Education , with a study entitled “Factors influencing Lecturer Assessment Practice in Diverse Southern Contexts”. As I recently sat in Danica’s PhD exit seminar, I was struck by how frequently she mentioned the role of various writing practices as an important part of her research journey. We often tend to think of ‘research’ as data collection and analysis, but in fact the whole research process is both embedded in and wrapped in writing - from the proposal, to the thesis, to the publications, and everything in between.  ------------------------------------------------------- Part 1 - "The Beginning" I submitted my doctoral thesis at the end of 2019. There were moments of intense stress, especially at the end, but, in general, for me, writing my thesis was not the ‘Everest’ many experience it to be. Here are some of my reflections a...

 Hello Fellow Writers, As someone who teaches people about academic writing, I find myself spending a lot of time breaking things down and talking about the different ‘parts’ of a text. So, for a change, I thought that I’d talk about building things up; about something that is critically important for successful academic writing: The Golden Thread. When healthcare professionals talk about the ‘ golden thread ’, they are talking about an unbroken chain of documentation that starts with a patient’s intake assessment, follows their treatment plan, and continues through to their progress notes. When writing lab consultants, supervisors, editors, or reviewers talk about the ‘ golden thread ’, they are talking about an unbroken chain of ideas that start in the introduction with the main theme or argument of a piece of writing, follows through the body, and continues into the conclusion of the text. Although these are two different ways of interpreting the golden thread , they ...