To start writing or to align the ducks: the myth of getting everything ready first

If you boil it all down, being a scientist means three things to me.

1. You observe the natural world and use logic to develop ideas about how it works.

2. You test those ideas with experiments and data.

3. You communicate the results of those experiments with others.

The first two are the fun part. You ask lots of questions. Do experiments or go into "the field" and look at rocks (or whatever it is you study). There's thinking, creativity, discovery. It's a real buzz.

But the third one. Umm. Let's face it - not so much!

The communication part of science is really where a lot of hard work comes into play. Here I'm thinking about writing specifically. For the writing part of communication you have to put all those ideas down on paper, so that others can see what you have found.

I think the writing is probably the hardest thing that you have to do as a scientist. Of course you need to have good ideas and good data and so on and all that takes a lot of effort. But I think the act of writing is possibly harder. There's a huge activation energy barrier it seems! Even if you do manage to make time to sit down to write - there's so many distractions! So many excuses. So many reasons why today isn't the day.

Whether it is a report for your employer or an academic paper for an international journal, any technical writing can be a real challenge. I've found it does get easier with practice, but it's still something that takes a lot of effort.

It's crucial for your career as a scientist that you know how to write. And I have a couple of tips that I want to share. These are two things that I learned from the wonderful Dr Maria Gardiner of ithinkwell. I've been at two of Maria's fantastic writing skills workshops and I couldn't praise her highly enough for the wisdom that she gave during those courses. So many tips and tricks that helped me and really boosted my productivity.

Two writing tips

The first is: don't wait until you fully know what you are going to write before you start writing. Lining up all the ducks sounds smart but unfortunately it is rare that you understand the whole story before you start.

Even professional writers don't have everything worked out. They would have an outline, a framework, and a basic plot in mind but they don't have every piece of dialogue, every scene and every detail worked out. That's the creative process.

The same is true for science writing. You have the basic structure - that's something we all learned in school - and you have at least an idea of what you want to say. But often the exact line of reasoning that you will follow in the Discussion is less clear.

In fact, as Maria says, writing clarifies your thinking.

The simple act of trying to write things down is incredibly useful for making sense of all the things that are going around in your head about your observations and data. While you might not know what you're going to say, writing in itself helps to capture those thoughts and gives you a chance to see what it is you are thinking. Only from there can you then judge of what you have been thinking is logical or not. As you write you can then see what else needs to be added and what things are not useful in your thinking.

Make dot points. Or just write off top of your head. This will get the ideas into the page from which the polishing can begin, but first you need to get the ideas on the page. As Maria says, "Write what you know."

The second tip: park on a hill. If the car battery is a flat, you can park on a hill so that next time you need to drive the car, you can roll the car and start it while it is moving. It's the same with writing.

Leave a note in your document that tells you where you are up to when you finish a writing session. The note can be as simple as "up to here". That way, the next time you are writing your paper all you need to do to start is find the note and continue on with what you were doing when you finished. You can also leave notes saying what you were thinking about at the end of the session to jog your memory next time.

This is a golden tip. It saves so much time. Don't be tempted to go back and rewrite the introduction every time you open the document.

Parking on a hill means every time you have a session of writing you get new words on the page. That is the main goal. Writing is getting new words on the page. Not rehashing old ones. There is a time and a place for editing. But first draft stage is not it.

Good luck with your writing! I'm sure you'll be great. Let me know if you have any other tips for how you succeed in your writing. I'm all ears.