How to make a good writer

‍Louise Pay is an academic editor, consultant, and writing coach.

Louise started her journey with a PhD in genetics, where she focussed on research skills like data analysis and laboratory skills. She then worked as an academic writer and editor before starting her own company, Academic Relations, with the intention to help academics better communicate their research findings and strengthen their interpersonal, communication and leadership skills. These are crucial skills that people are expected to have in academia.

These skills are very rarely explicitly taught, however, so Louise started Academic Relations to help create resources to help with that. 

Louise provides academic editing services 1-to-1 online consulting on written and verbal communications, and a solutions-focused online coaching approach to communication, space issues and conflict resolution within academic teams.

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What motivated you to do a PhD? And what was that experience like?

Ultimately, I wanted to do a PhD because I believed that I could help people through doing scientific research. While there are many aspects of conducting research that I found rewarding, I learned relatively early on that I was more aligned with the conceptualisation and communication of ideas such as writing grants and papers, than I was with physically doing the research, and I found a narrow focus of like PhD research projects and projects like that in general was insufficient to keep my interest, and I wanted to be in an environment where I could interact and work with academics across a broad range of fields and learn about more diverse topics.

I realised that I could use my skills to help others develop and publish their research and better lead their research teams, and that I would feel like I was helping people more directly doing that work than I felt doing research projects that take years, sometimes decades, to yield treatments to directly help patients.

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What is your experience with burnout like, and how do you identify when you’re burnt out?

For me, burnout is more it's about what you're doing and not how much of it you're doing in a lot of cases. I was fairly burned out a lot when I was doing research because I didn't like it. If you find yourself, burned out, you've got to be able to distinguish between whether you’re burned out because there's too much work, or the burnout stems from doing work that you don't want to be doing. 

That's my advice. For anyone who feels burnt out, the first step is to identify if you’re trying to do work that you don't want to be doing. Or if there's just too much work and you need to work on structuring your days better and implement plans for setting out experiments more effectively, for example.

So really the cause is going to depend on how you would address it. And it usually kind of affects how you feel about it too, because if you're burned out from just having too much work, you're going to be more tired, but motivation is still going to be there. But if you're burned out because you're doing something you really don't want to be doing, you’re going to really struggle to get the work done. That's a sign that you don't want to be doing what you're doing

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In your work as an academic editor and coach, what have been the unexpected challenges that you faced?

The most unexpected challenge was having to start using social media! I first started to freelance several years ago. I used word of mouth on my website to find people who wanted to work with me. Over the past few years, social media has become such a necessity in any type of freelance or independent business work, and I was surprised to find that I would have to be willing to put my face out there in public, on social channels, if I wanted credibility and to grow this steady client base.

I had a mentor who was helping me figure out where to take this work, and when she told me that social media would play a major role in reaching new clients, my immediate thought was, no, I can't make online videos. But I started doing it and I realised how fun it was and how I really enjoyed the process. And I get most of my clients through social media now, so it's working well in terms of the actual work itself.

If you want to get into this kind of work where you're dealing with people directly, and those people often have pressing needs, the biggest thing to keep in mind is maintaining your work-life balance, and being willing to say no if a particular project or meeting doesn't fit with your schedule. I have a very open meeting schedule because I work outside of regular hours and can typically accommodate people across multiple time zones, but if you're not careful, that can translate into using all of your free time for work and then your risk of burning out.

So I'd recommend scheduling at least one day per week where you're not taking any meetings or any other work-related tasks like rest is important, even if you're working for yourself. And then with the editing specifically, sometimes the scope of a project changes massively between when the client first described it to you and when they actually send it to you.

This can be changes in word count in what they want you to actually do with the document or deadlines, and it's really important to be comfortable telling a client ‘I need extra time’. If the project scope increases, you'll need to adjust the invoice to match the increased work involved.

I do offer some discounts and perks for returning clients, but in general, it's best not to give work away for free, especially if it's work that you would have invoiced for had it been in the original project pitch. I've never had a client complain when I've had to adjust turnaround times or prices. Many come back for their next project. It's really all about knowing your schedule, your boundaries, and your ability to give your clients your best at all times. And sometimes that does mean saying no.

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In your work as a coach and as an academic writer, and back when you were an academic, did you ever use any tools, AI tools like Grammarly, PaperPal, or Scholarcy?

Well, we didn't have AI when I was a grad school student, because I'm old!

I actually don't use AI as a part of my work process. I use macros and Microsoft Word for editing that I've created for myself to save time, but I don't use AI directly on client work, and here's why. The main reason for this is that a lot of my clients specifically, are looking for human involvement with their projects and issues, because they are already using the AI tools. They want someone like me to help them fact-check, make their writing sound more professional or more concise and human sounding after they’ve already used AI. One of the great things about AI is how accessible it is. Everyone can use it. It can take out a lot of the time that goes into things like outlining a paper, or even solving a problem. But I find my clients are really looking for that human touch, so I haven't looked into building AI tools into my personal workflow.

However, one thing I have used AI for in terms of my business is streamlining my approach to scheduling, planning social media posts and general business plan. I watched a few of those free online courses on how to use ChatGPT as a tool for strategizing by asking it very specific questions about my business. After describing what my goals were, and it gave me some really good ideas. So it's a great starting point for getting outlines and pointers for what the next steps are and what order things should be done in. So I really like using ChatGPT and other tools like that in that way.

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ChatGPT can be a great tool for overcoming writers’ block. Instead of asking ChatGPT to write for you, ask it to prompt you, ask it for suggestions of where to begin, and how to continue writing something troublesome.

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I totally agree with that. It gives some really good suggestions, you know, then you can do the writing part. But if you have like writer's block and you don't know what you're writing, just throw it into ChatGPT and it'll give you inspiration. You think, oh, okay, now I can start, but you're not taking the words directly from ChatGPT.

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Since the advent of AI tools, has your has the structure of your job changed? Has what you’re doing differed from before AI tools were released to the market? Have AI tools made people lazy?

I definitely wouldn't call them lazy! I can often tell if someone has used ChatGPT, for example, because it has very distinctive wording. ChatGPT overuses certain words and phrases like delve and realm and ‘embarking on a journey’. I hate those words now! I don't see this as an issue in terms of my work though. It becomes more of a coaching opportunity because I can explain to clients why this phrasing is indicative of ChatGPT and how to use ChatGPT to get an outline of what they want to say, but then rewrite it in their own words. Because most journals require you to declare that you've used generative AI in writing papers as well. And this is something that I'll mention to clients in case they're not aware that they need to declare this. Non-generative AI tools like Grammarly have definitely helped people a lot in terms of clearing up grammar and phrasing before I ever see a document for editing. However, Grammarly, as far as I know, doesn't have a setting that aligns its suggestions with specific style guides. I've had a couple of instances where I've been asked to follow a specific style guide, and then the client has questioned why I made certain changes, because Grammarly is telling them that those changes are wrong, when in reality Grammarly is just applying a different style.

So one of the common examples of this, is if you have Grammarly set to recommend the use of serial commas, it will flag sentences that need them as incorrect if they're not there. But some style guides specifically state that the serial comma should not be used, right? 

I have looked at Scholarcy, and I think it's a great resource for consolidating papers and getting key points out of them, and that could really help people cut down on the amount of time they spend reading papers. I know when I was still in research, that was one of the things that took the longest time, because often just screening abstracts, which is, as you know, how we all used to do, it wasn't sufficient to identify the truly relevant papers I'd had. I think I had a good stack of papers to use for a review or something. When I got to reading the full text, I found many of them weren't exactly what they seemed to be from the abstract. This means that having a tool like Scholarcy which provides a summary of the full text and isn't just the abstract becomes really helpful for deciding what papers to include in a literature review.

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The average researcher reads 280 articles a year, and that's at the bottom of the funnel. Imagine the start of it when they start screening. How many articles they have to review!

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Can you share any success stories or highlights about your work so far?

I had someone ask me to help them learn how to improve the academic style of their writing. They had a really casual and conversational, very wordy way of phrasing things, with a tendency to overwrite without making it clear what they were intending to say. So we started with one paragraph at a time, I would rewrite the paragraph with detailed explanations about the changes I was making and why, then they would then edit the next one themselves, and I would re-edit whilst providing them with more feedback.

It only took three back-and-forth interactions for them to be able to make the necessary changes to their writing and gain confidence in their ability to write moving forward. From then, I edited the final version of their document and it needed very few changes, so it was really satisfying to watch somebody learn and gain confidence in their own ability. I love watching people realise that they can do things that's amazing.

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How do you navigate giving somebody a lot of really constructive criticism in your day-to-day work?

I mean, I wouldn't say I don't like it. I think criticising people is a lot of fun, actually! Honestly, if it's constructive criticism, it always involves the person learning from the experience. In my experience, if you really want the person to gain something from what you're saying, and I don't think you should offer any kind of criticism if you don't have that goal. The most important thing to consider before you even think about how to word that constructive criticism, is how a particular person you're working with receives information. Consider your experience with that person. Are they confident? Are they highly sensitive? Do they like to engage in long discussions and analyses, or do they prefer quick action focus points? Would they rather have a conversation with you or communicate by email? Tailoring the approach to the person is the best way to make sure that your advice is best received and helps the most. Some people receive criticism best if you first explain what's good about their approach. Some just want to get to the point.

You can even ask people how they would like to be communicated with. This shows that you're interested in helping them specifically, and not just ticking off a task on your to-do list. I try to bring the human aspect of work into everything I do, because sometimes when we're engaging with people remotely, it can feel like we're all computers. We're nothing but a computer screen, and that can make receiving critical comments really difficult, especially if someone struggles with confidence. So it's all about how the person's going to receive it and how best to communicate it with them. That's going to change how they will interpret that advice.

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Do you have any tips for students and researchers in the midst of writing a dissertation or their first journal article, what commonly goes wrong and what tips do you have to help them with that?

So what really tends to go wrong with these is people not understanding how to structure them. And it can get very frustrating when you're trying to write and you don't really know where your information goes. So if you were to visualise a journal article in terms of the scope of information throughout, it would look like an hourglass. So it begins with a wide scope, it gets narrower, and more specific in the middle, and it broadens out at the bottom.

So it begins with a wide scope with the introduction. Then it narrows down to the specific information about your study. The narrowest section is going to be your methods and your results, and then it will broaden out again into the discussion, conclusion, and future directions. So think about that shape when you're writing your paper, your introduction starts broad.

The introduction establishes the field of research and what's known about it. Then the narrowing begins as you communicate the knowledge gap and your questions, the narrative will narrow further as you explain your specific study purpose. Your main findings, the significance and innovation of your work. The methodology should be really specific and concise, and you should include sufficient information for another researcher to replicate that study.

Now, this is one thing that I see a lot that's very annoying. If you were referencing methods that have been previously used, if a person would have to go back through six papers worth of method sections to find that full description of that method, please provide more detail than simply saying as previously described, or cite the paper that has the method in it, not the five ones after it that also said, as previously described.

The results section should clearly state the findings with no discussion. Commentary belongs in the discussion section. Make sure that it is clear in the results section why you did the experiment and what it shows, but without including too much introduction material either. 

After you've described your results, your scope is going to broaden again throughout the discussion section. But start with the narrowest topic of your study findings. What the outcomes were and what those outcomes tell us. Then branch out into contextualising those findings within the field. Analyse them and their implications in the context of the literature, and explain how they align with or contradict with previous findings and what the implications of that are.

Finally, state the project limitations. All projects have them. It's not a bad thing. It's best to recognise them, because then you can bring in options for addressing those limitations in your future directions section. And that should also include recommendations for where people can take your work in the future.

And then finally provide a concise conclusion that states the purpose, key findings, and implications of your study. That's a really good framework if you want to put that down in an outline. If you're struggling with your structure and then figure out where the pieces that you've written already fit in with that, that can help you build that first paper.

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Please, can you share something that you're proud of 

Leaving academic research. 

That might sound like an odd thing to be proud of, but I want anyone who is listening to this, who is thinking about leaving to know that going after something that you align with better is an act of growth. It is not quitting. I did not quit research. I progressed towards something I wanted more. It's never quitting to invest in yourself even. Even if doing so means leaving behind something you previously wanted, or you put a lot of time and effort into.

Remember that sunk cost fallacy. Just because you've invested a lot of time and effort into something, it doesn't mean you have to keep doing that thing. You're just going to lose more of it. If you keep doing that thing, you can take what you've learned and funnel that into a new direction. If something isn't what you want. Forget thinking about how good you are at it, because if you stick with something you don't want because you're good at it, in five years time, you're going to be better at something you don't want. If you're willing to start out with something new that you're not that good at yet, but you really want it in those five years, you're going to be good at something you want.

And I know which option sounds better to me.

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