Literature Reviews: A Blog for the Exasperated from Writing Works Consulting

Reading. That’s the fun bit when you’re writing a literature review. There’s no hard and fast plan yet, the deadline’s a long way off, and you’re full of optimism and excitement. The start of your PhD. Wow!  You pick up the first paper in your pile, your shiny new notebook and pen at the ready. More of a screen person? You’ve got that whole new file, labelled and ready. A sip of coffee, a deep breath, and you begin. What a fascinating study! Interesting design. Wonder why they did it this way and not that way? And a finding that surprised them. How about that!  A few papers later, you notice that everyone seems to refer to that same study from 1992. Definitely one for your reading list. Oh, and there seems to be a bit of tussle over the way data are analysed. A disagreement in the field! Definitely one to record in your notes.  The Description Trap  And so it goes through the golden days of September, sitting in coffee shops and sunny library corners, happily reading...

✍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 ...

 It is that time of year again. 🎄🎉 We are frantically getting those last things done, running around buying presents 🎁, writing cards, and doing all the other things we do to prepare for the holiday season. If, in amongst all that you are also one of those brave people writing a dissertation 📚, you might also be setting aside some precious undistracted time to work on your literature review. In honour of the season, I wanted to share with you my 12 most successful mistakes. Yes, you read that correctly  -- successful mistakes. Doing anything for the first time involves some stumbling around, and I certainly did my share of that. It was when I fell down and got back up that I learned the most, and in this blog that is what I want to share with you.  So, here it is -- my 12 most productive mistakes from 30 years of writing literature reviews and what they taught me. 1. Not understanding the role of description. If you read my blog regularly, you'll know your literature ...

 Yes it is. Writing is not easy, especially the kind of high-stakes persuasive writing you need to do in a literature review. For many of us, it can also be scary and this fear can be paralyzing.  The task looms before us – huge, terribly important, but somehow still not started. Instead of sitting down and just digging into the task, we anxiously hurl obstacles at it: But how do I start?! I can’t start if I don’t know how!! I’ve never done anything like this before, so I can’t do it now! This wasn’t really covered in the one session we had on literature reviews! My mind goes blank every time I try to start! Or: I have all these notes, but now what ?? They taught us how to search for articles, but what am I supposed to actually write?!! I have now been staring at this cursor for over an hour! I’ll never finish at this rate! and so on.  Many of us will have similar cascading thoughts when it comes to writing our literature review. I was just about to say there is...

This is another question I often get, and it is a good one.  Gone are the days when you could locate all of the studies in your field and go through them as an individual. You could probably spend the rest of your life searching and reading and never be done. So knowing when you have read enough studies is one of many decisions you need to make as the author of your review.  So how do you make it? There are two things you need to consider when you are deciding if your literature review is done.  As I have noted in a previous post , your literature review is an argument in which you make the case for why your research question needs to be asked. So have you made your case?  Do you take the reader, step by step, through the patterns and trends you have discerned in the body of work on your topic, establishing how these patterns and trends add up to the need to ask your research question? Have you instanced each of these patterns and trends with findings from the studi...