P2P No. 22 — Read2Write
"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing"—Benjamin Franklin
Writing constitutes a significant part of a scientist's life. We must communicate our findings and convince committees to give us awards or grants. Nonetheless, writing does not seem to be a skill doctoral programs generally invest enough time to develop, barring a few exceptions.
There is the textbook version of becoming a better writer: taking scientific writing courses—some graduate schools do offer them, and then you should take them. Not being in that place or wanting more, there is another option:
To improve your writing for free or at the cost of a public library membership, what you need to do is read more.
Why do we read? Beyond the sometimes traumatic experience of assigned readings in high school, most books can be a source of joy. And so can be the process of reading on its own, sitting with a cup of hot tea in a warm room in the midst of winter.
Written words beyond the length of a tweet require thought from their writers, distilling the wisdom of humanity. Although many counterexamples surely exist, I will make the premise that there is a subset of books worth reading. To quote Seneca:
There are too many mediocre books which exist just to entertain your mind. Therefore, read only those books which are accepted without doubt as good.
Although it eludes me whether there can be such a thing as a consensus, it can be instructive to assay what people whose footsteps you want to follow do read—for example, Barack Obama frequently releases his book recommendations. I am subscribed to the book recommendations of Ryan Holiday from The Daily Stoic and of Brad Stulberg from The Growth Equation.
If we consider reading as a pursuit of wisdom, how does fiction come into the picture? Alas, I included fiction as well in my reading list newsletter. Putting beside didactic stories, reading fiction can benefit scientific writing; namely, from books, we either learn something
moral,
factual, or
compositional.
The last two will improve our scientific writing skills. Fiction can particularly shine regarding composition—nonfiction authors do not always focus on the style but only the content.
Clarity of expression is to me the greatest virtue of penmanship, and where could we learn that if not from the most exceptional writers? Surely, Shakespeare's English will be inappropriate to modern standards, but the stylistic choices are a pattern we might follow.
Sounding smart is a fallacy that neglects that the goal is to ingrain our message in the audience, which begs for clarity. This is what a scientist should do: remove the barrier of jargon and ease understanding to make science more accessible to the public. It is probably no surprise that society at large is disconnected from science; mile-long integrals and cryptic expressions do not help that.
Clarity also helps the writer: it will decrease the churn rate, i.e., more people will finish reading the paper. Writing clearly requires substantial practice, but the return on the time invested will pay out.
“Most people write to sound smart when they should write to be useful.
Communicating to sound smart lowers your potential for impact. The harder people have to work to understand you, the less they want your input. Writing to be useful means writing what you would want to read. Simple, but not easy.”—Farnam Street
The key is self-reflection: ask yourself whether you would read happily what you wrote. If it is not a clear yes, then it is a no. Books can guide you in becoming a better writer by training your inner critique by exposing it to Quality. That means reading, even beyond textbooks and scientific papers.