I had downloaded wordpress for blackberry to my phone so that I could write these blogs on bus journeys. Seemed simple, worked on the download and never since, so as you can see the updates have been sparse.
At the moment I’m producing an interim report for the team on what we’ve found and on the bigger picture. It’s really interesting and a great development opportunity for me.
The reports I’ve written in the past were very guided end of year reports for funders or 2 page briefing reports on the case for certain actions. The only documents I’ve ever written that were so long were essays and again they were to a specific question. The essays were also usually on a period no earlier than the 1700′s and as such, it felt more ‘definitive’ when I wrote. Now, I find I write and then re-write and add new readings, every time I sit down. It seems, there are points of general agreement that are also reflected in my findings, but there are also findings that cannot be generalised because they are taken from qualitative study and presenting them in a way that I feel stands up to criticism is proving tricky.
I’m struggling with my audience, does it want to be for local authority partners or academics? In the end, it’s for neither. I’ve had to settle on writing what my brain is repeatedly focussing on if only to stop it from distracting me. The words and sentences and paragraphs are building steadily and soon there should be enough to cut into a report for academics, a report for local authority audiences and a report for me.
Given that I know this isn’t the last long report I have to write, I just need to remember a few things for the sake of sanity next time:
- When I say two days, I mean two weeks.
- There is only so much reading you can do before you write.
- Try to organise it for a week when your supervisor’s in the country
- OR set up a writing group because one person writing for 5 days is unlikely to be thinking straight by day 3.
Best get back to the report…
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Hannah Goraya (York)