✍This is a common worry, and a particularly pernicious one. You’ve just got absorbed into your work, you’re feeling motivated, you’ve started noticing interesting connections between sources, and then 💥BAM!💥 Am I doing it right? All the papers I read sound so clever! I don’t sound like that! How can I ever establish myself as an expert with this mess?! Fear and doubt rear their ugly heads and then paralysis sets in. You’d set aside the whole morning to get some real work done, but now? Impossible. Your pen falters on the page and it feels like there's a weight crushing down on you.
🤫 I’m going to let you in on a secret.
All those papers you are reading 📚 -- the ones that sound so clever, the ones by the biggest and most established names in your field -- they all began as sloppy, messy drafts, every single one of them. And that is because drafts are supposed to be sloppy and messy. That’s their job.
➡️ No one’s draft sounds clever.
That’s all very well for a draft, you might say, but the final product has to sound clever. How do I get from here to there? A good point. And here is my counter-intuitive answer:
✳️ Sounding clever is one of those things that emerges while you are doing other things, an insight inspired by John Kay's Obliquity (Profile Books).
➡️ So stop trying to sound clever and do those other things. Here are some ideas to get you started.
🟣 Be curious. That paper you are reading now – does it use a statistical test you don’t know? That’s interesting. Take 15 minutes to look it up. Or maybe there’s a theoretical approach that seems particularly popular in your field. Why is everyone jumping on that bandwagon? That would be interesting to know.
🟣 Be visual. Free yourself from the tyranny of the screen and experiment with some storyboarding techniques. Most literature reviews start with ‘There are many studies on X’ and end with ‘And therefore we need to ask Y’. ‘Y’, of course, is your research question. Write these two sentences out on cards. Put the first one at the top of your work space, and the last one at the bottom. Now take all the findings from previous studies you've read. Convert those into cards and start sorting. What patterns do you find? Map out the journey, step by logical step, between your start and end points.
🟣 Ask genuine questions. Start with that first paper in your to-read stack. Work out what it’s arguing and what its main findings are, and then read the rest of your allotted papers for the day in who-dunnit mode, recording the answers as you go. Who agrees with the first paper? Who disagrees? Which findings point in the same direction? Which do not? Who goes off in a different direction entirely? Who do you think makes the strongest arguments, and the weakest? Having assessed the evidence, what in your view does the weight of evidence suggest?
🟣 Remember your true purpose. The point of your literature is not to sound clever. The point of your literature review is to make the case for why your research question needs to be asked. Concentrate on making the case.
🟣 Remember that the very act of reading is strengthening your style. There is a curious connection between reading and writing: the more you read in the style in which you want to write, the better you will get at it, naturally and without trying.
💡I’ll leave you with one last insight. It’s not really about sounding clever. It’s about knowing your stuff. Work out your argument. My research question needs to be asked because . . . Work out the answer to that, the main points that support that answer, and the evidence for each point. Once you've done that, sounding clever takes care of itself.
