Writing and research

Writing is obviously harder than reading. That is the reason why some students do get caught in the reading process and read loads of literature with nothing to show for. However, I have read somewhere that, in life  we sometimes have to choose to do the harder thing as opposed to the easier alternative ( you know, like sleeping is easier than waking up and coming to 8 o'clock lectures : -) ). So, as a research student we have to start to write. Writing is important because the act of writing itself requires us to think. It also requires a lot of practice just like any other skill. We have to decide on the message, structure our points and then string one sentence after another so that it makes some sense.

Actually, writing and research are like two sides of the same coin. Personally for me, I will write a little piece everytime I finished reading a few articles. The piece of writing is usually for my own consumption, not to be confused with writing for jounals or conferences (that requires a different level of detail and the objectives are different). For me writing gave me

i. Clarity on the issues presented by the authors

ii. An indicator of whether I understood the papers that I read

iii. A collection of anecdotes/ideas/summary to fall on when I want to write the literature review (which will also come in handy once we decided to write papers)

iv. A record of the trail of ideas that I had during the whole research process (which can become starting points for discussions with supervisors)

I have my PhD supervisor to thank for this habit, because he was the person who urged me to keep a notebook ( the paper one---not the electronic one) of the ideas, summary of papers etc during my PhD journey. It was very useful and the method worked for me ( caution here: it might not work for someone else---value in context (?) )

However, context aside, I personally believe that if we cannot sit down and articulate what we have in our head onto paper either in the form of diagrams or (own) words then our understanding of the whole thing is suspect. If we do not understand what we read then how can we build upon it and produce new findings? [Of course we can all sit under an apple tree and discover gravity....hmm that is another story ;-) ]