New Horizons in Adult Education

Writer’s Forum— & Human Resource Development

Writing for Publication 27 (1), 51-55

While in Graduate School:

An Accessible Reality

Joshua C. Collins1

Abstract
The purpose of this Writer’s Forum is to share eight tips about writing for publication as a graduate student. These
tips demonstrate writing for publication as an accessible reality for students. This Writer’s Forum advances ideas,
advice, and anecdotes focused on helping graduate students to see themselves as valued experts who are capable of
writing, dealing with feedback and criticism, and using time in a thoughtful and productive manner.

Keywords
Writing for publication, graduate students, publishing, writing

Many graduate students struggle with the writing process, whether completing class papers or preparing a manuscript
for submission to a publication outlet. Some of the most common barriers for graduate students include: lacking ad-
equate previous training, thinking writing is not “for you,” feeling like you do not know enough, interpreting con-
structive criticism as an indication that you should quit, perceiving that there is not enough time, allowing other roles
and responsibilities to interfere, and discounting the value of free writing (see Nackoney, Munn, & Fernandez,
2011). Most graduate students experience some combination of all these barriers, as well as other tensions that can
bring progress toward good writing to a screeching halt (Lee & Atchison, 2011). Few graduate students will tell you
that they see no value in becoming better writers; most want to improve but do not know how to do so.
Faculty members’ attempts to address issues with graduate student writing can be thwarted by their own writing/
publishing commitments, teaching loads, service and mentorship obligations, and increasingly large class sizes. It is
difficult for faculty to give all graduate students the attention necessary to develop their skills as writers and scholars,
so many of us end up focusing on those students who already have strong skillsets. What most graduate students
need are honest and clear pieces of advice regarding the writing and publishing process.

1
University of Arkansas
Corresponding Author:
Joshua C. Collins, University of Arkansas, Department of Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders,
102 Graduate Education Building, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701, USA
Email: collinsj@uark.edu

Copyright © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company

52 New Horizons in Adult Education & Human Resource Development, 27 (1)

While I was in graduate school, I was fortunate enough to have a few mentors who worked with me to publish class
papers in conference proceedings and in academic journals. These individuals truly saw writing as mentoring
(Courtenay, Cervero, & Dirkx, 2011). With my mentors’ help, most of my class papers eventually found a “home”
as published work. From January 2010 to August 2014, as a Master’s and then Doctoral student, I published five
refereed journal articles, three non-refereed journal articles, one refereed chapter, three non-refereed chapters, elev-
en refereed papers in conference proceedings, two book reviews, and co-edited one monograph and one special is-
sue. Numbers in most of these categories doubled or almost doubled in my first semester as faculty, primarily based
on work that I began in graduate school. I do not share these examples with an attitude of boastfulness, but rather
gratitude. Most of my published work in graduate school was sole-authored. What my mentors did for me was help
me to see writing for publication as an accessible reality so that now, as faculty, I “feel freer, more confident, and
more competent to initiate research and publication projects” (Courtenay et al., 2011, p. 306).
The purpose of this Writer’s Forum is to share eight tips about writing for publication that I picked up from interac-
tions with my own mentors in graduate school, and that I now share with my own graduate students as faculty. The-
se tips are focused on seeing yourself as a valued expert, getting the writing done, dealing with feedback and criti-
cism, and moving on to make the most of your time.
Tip #1: Use fun activities as a reward for work done.
The first thing graduate students should know about writing for publication is that it comes easily and naturally to
very few. The most successful writers are successful because they make the time for writing despite other things
that may be going on in their personal and professional lives (Silva, 2007). To be successful at publishing, it is im-
portant to think of ways you can manage not only your time, but also work, school, and personal well-being. This
process involves prioritizing writing in way that many of us are not used to. You have to learn to say, “I am sorry,
but I need to focus on this project right now. Can we have dinner together in a couple days?” There is no way
around it: writing while you are in graduate school will require sacrifice, and it matters little whether or not you are
a part-time or full-time student, have a family, or are younger or older than your peers. Everyone has their own set
of struggles and obstacles.
One way to be successful in striking some semblance of balance is to use fun activities as a reward for work done.
How you measure the work you aim to complete is up to you. You can measure the work in pages or paragraphs
written, time spent writing, or some other way. You might tell yourself, I am going to write four pages today and
when I am done I will check in with friends to see if anyone has some free time. You might also decide, I am going
to write from 7 pm until 11 pm tonight and tomorrow morning I am going to sleep in and see a movie with a friend
in the afternoon. The key is to hold yourself accountable to these goals and to reward yourself only when you
reach them. It is also important to immediately keep the next goal in sight. So while you are meeting up with
friends or watching a movie, you should be thinking about what you will do when that activity or time is up: To-
morrow, I am going to write from the moment I get off work until 1 or 2 am. I might be tired the day after, but then
I can relax that evening. Setting up writing with rewards in mind is an excellent way to establish a productive writ-
ing habit, and the more you write for publication, the less intimidating it is likely to seem.
Tip #2: Recognize when you are making excuses.
Because writing for publication is intimidating, it is easy to make excuses for why it is not possible, or why you do
not get around to it, or how you are not “good at it” (Winslow, 2008). If you have any emotional setbacks or transi-
tional issues, this can also complicate the writing process. Being in a new place, starting a new job, having a child,
getting married, working full-time, or dealing with personal issues are all challenges that I have seen derail the writ-
ing of even the best graduate students. When my own grandmother passed away during the second year of my doc-
toral studies, I struggled to find meaning in work that only a couple weeks before had me engaged and excited. I
did not feel like writing. However, after two or three weeks of ignoring my writing and publishing responsibilities,
I started to recognize that I had simply become a little lazy. While I was still coping with the death of my grand-
mother, I was also enjoying not writing even though I knew I needed to be. I had made a series of excuses for my-
self that included my grandmother’s passing. Once I recognized this, I was able to get back on track toward re-
establishing my writing habits. Part of what makes writing for publication an accessible reality for graduate stu-
dents is self-reflection, or the ability to look at your choices and actions and identify areas for improvement. I en-
courage all graduate students to critically examine the ways that they spend their time each day and to think about
the excuses they make for not getting around to doing the work required to publish if that is something that interests
them or will advance their careers. More often than not, you will find your own series of excuses that has been re-
sponsible for a lack of writing productivity, and you must address them to continue improving.
53 New Horizons in Adult Education & Human Resource Development, 27 (1)

Tip #3: Keep your research close.

Everything you have been told about staying away from topics that are “too close” or “too personal” is probably
wrong. While writing about subject matter that hits close to home or is in some way tied to personal identity cer-
tainly requires the author to take a careful and reflective step back, that does not mean you should always avoid
those kinds of projects or opportunities. Actually, writing about something you care about or are personally invest-
ed in can be a great place to start because “writing can be a miserable chore, a difficult undertaking, and a chal-
lenge that produces growth and satisfaction—at the same time” (Rocco, 2011, p. 3). Graduate students and early
career scholars can benefit from starting with what they know and exploring topics with which they are already
familiar. Doing so enables even novice writers to achieve a somewhat finished product much more quickly.
When we write about topics that are close to us and we care about, we are more easily able to merge our interests
to identify gaps and problems worth addressing. Often this is because we have personally experienced the issue at
hand and know it to be true. We can describe it in detail. We can find resources with ease. We can more easily
conceptualize the important components of our arguments and statements. As long as you can provide references
and resources for what you are saying, this should not be a problem. In fact, it should be encouraged. Most of us
would not accept a reality that dictates we should take a job for which we have no previous qualification, interest,
or context for understanding. Writing should be no different. Write about what is close to you and from the start
you will already be ahead, en route to a finished product—at least until someone else reviews it.
Tip #4: Guard your ego.
The hardest part about writing, particularly for publication, is hearing what other people have to say about your
work without taking it personally. Individuals with blunt delivery styles will undoubtedly at times review your
manuscripts. Because you are a graduate student, your professors are unlikely to treat you with the same nurturing
spirit you have received from undergraduate or high school teachers. Likewise, journal reviewers typically do not
know the identities of the authors whose work they review, and they likely will not know you are a graduate stu-
dent. Your work will be evaluated based on how strong it is, and the feedback will not be sugarcoated. Editors
often have some sense of whom they are dealing with before issuing a decision on your manuscript, but more often
than not, editors do not alter the comments of reviewers before returning them to you. Getting your first manuscript
back from a conference or journal could be a harsh reality check, so guard your ego carefully (see Brookfield,
2011).
Surround yourself with smart people who can review your work and give you constructive, positive feedback, and
aim to be one of those people yourself. Take what your colleagues, professors, reviewers, and editors say and think
about how their comments apply to the entire manuscript. Sometimes graduate students make the mistake of ad-
dressing feedback given only at the sentence level. Often people who will read your work point problems out in
one or two sentences and then assume you will apply their comment to other sentences; they are tired of comment-
ing on the same error over and over again. For this reason, choosing to apply feedback to an entire manuscript is
always the best choice. It also means that you need to develop the skills necessary to discern the true meaning be-
hind reviewer comments (Brookfield, 2011). It could be that a sentence a reviewer says they do not like is actually
okay in terms of content and writing, but out of place in the paragraph, section, or manuscript. Learning how to
understand why someone gives you the kind of feedback that they do is as important in the revision process as any-
thing else. An excellent strategy for learning about reviewer feedback might even be to become one yourself
(Donmoyer, 2011), as the process of reviewing for a journal or conference can enlighten you regarding others’
struggles, perspectives, and styles. Reviewing the work of others also helps to de-personalize the experience of
receiving feedback.
Feedback can seem devastating, but “following this initial devastation eventually comes a period of recovery
marked by a growing anger at the inability of reviewers to appreciate the merits of one’s work” (Brookfield, 2011,
p. 252). Even though you may struggle with hearing others’ thoughts about your work, the key is to revise reflec-
tively. It may be that after you receive feedback you need to take a break from working on the manuscript and
come back to it when your head is clear and you can look at what others had to say more objectively. Your mind-
set has to be that you will do whatever it takes to get the project completed. You might even realize something as
major as needing to get rid of 40% of the paper so you can replace it with completely new text. This happens, and
it is a normal part of the writing process. Remember that you are not alone if you feel discouraged in instances like
these. What will set you apart is if you are able to take those feelings and harness them into a productive research
agenda, turning one idea into multiple working manuscripts with slightly different angles on the same or a similar
problem.
54 New Horizons in Adult Education & Human Resource Development, 27 (1)

Tip #5: Maintain realistic expectations.

While working on any manuscript as a graudate student, it is important to maintain attainable expectations. You
must look at the manuscript in front of you with realistic eyes (Huff, 1999). Can you finish it on your own, or
should you ask a co-author to join? What is a realistic outlet for publication? What is a feasible time frame for the
manuscript to be ready to submit? What kind of feedback do you anticipate? Many graduate students do not know
the answers to these questions as they work on a manuscript, and it can severely slow the process. Aiming to pub-
lish your first-ever manuscript in the best journal in your field in only a year’s time might not be a realistic goal.
Journals and some conferences often keep manuscripts in review for three or more months. When a decision is
issued, unless you are lucky enough to get accepted right away (and this is exceedingly rare), you will need to take
time with the feedback and with your revisions. You might even need to find another outlet for the manuscript. It
is important to keep all of this in mind as you work—not from a place of negativity, but rather realism. Distinguish
the facts about the publishing process from what you fantasized the experience would be. Writing for publication
can be like a job, and the level of commitment required is comparable. Most of us would not start a new job and
assume that we will be promoted the next week. Publishing is no different.
Tip #6: Develop a strong “elevator pitch.”
Unless you are working on a project that involves reporting a cure for cancer or a groundbreaking new theory for
understanding some phenomenon like employee engagement, it is highly unlikely that many people will care quite
as much about what you write as you do. This includes professors, editors, reviewers, peers, and others who may
be reading your work. The fact is everyone has their own obligations and priorities in life and less time for consid-
ering others’ interests or concerns. Your job, and the goal of scholarly writing, is to craft a convincing argument
that compels others to care. While this may seem to be a daunting task—and often it is one that disrupts graduate
students’ writing—it can be done by thinking about your writing as more of a conversation than anything else
(Huff, 1999).
The first part of your conversation, your introduction, should be viewed as an “elevator pitch.” Essentially, you
should start your work by writing a rationale and background to what you are doing that could be read aloud to an-
other person in one minute or less, as if you were on an elevator with that person and had only that time to explain.
Of course certain writing projects will require a longer explanation before your purpose can be clearly understood,
but aiming for the “elevator pitch” introduction is a good way to help yourself stay on track as you write that part
of your manuscript. Staying on track in your introduction is the best way to set the pace for the rest of the manu-
script—it demonstrates to readers that you want them to care and that you respect the time and energy they put into
reading your work. If you cannot describe what you are doing in under a minute, then you need to edit and re-
conceptualize. Once you can describe your project fully and quickly out loud, chances are that you can write an
introduction that will set the pace for the rest of your manuscript and establish your voice as a well-read expert.
Tip #7: See yourself as an authority.
In some ways, graduate students are conditioned to question their capabilities and their knowledge. Graduate stu-
dents are taught that while they are still students, they are not authorities on any topic. This mindset unfortunately
can poison the writing process for graduate students because writing un-authoritatively lessens the strength of logic
and arguments (Epstein, 2011). The key to overcoming this obstacle is thinking of yourself as a scholar: you are
one already.
A piece of paper conferring a certain level of education is not what makes a productive writer or academic. Being
a skilled writer is about understanding the topic of concern enough to convey the meaning and importance behind
what you have to say. Most individuals with doctorates cannot even say that they know everything about any giv-
en subject. At best, many probably knew close to everything about their dissertation topic at one point in time, but
it is likely that new findings and information with which they are unfamiliar have emerged since that time. Some
do not even know everything when they write their dissertations. Not knowing everything does not diminish their
credibility as scholars, nor should it for you. The best writers know how to make the most of what they know,
identify gaps in knowledge, and work to fill those gaps. When you write a manuscript on leadership, for example,
certainly it might benefit you to know about most or all leadership theories that exist, but such a breadth of
knowledge is only necessary if you intend to outline, review, or synthesize those theories in some meaningful and
new way. But if you are writing about transformational leadership, you only need to be able to write authoritative-
ly about transformational leadership—not experiential leadership or participative leadership or any other type
(unless relevant to your argument). And yet many graduate students will think they need to be experts on every
leadership theory before they are “allowed” to publish a manuscript on leadership.
55 New Horizons in Adult Education & Human Resource Development, 27 (1)

You should not let not knowing “everything” keep you from writing, but at the same time it is important to avoid
“verbosity, ambiguity, and … ‘unsubstantiality’” (Epstein, 2011, p. 92). When you are feeling exceptionally lost
on any particular topic, start with nonthreatening writing tasks such as looking up related articles or developing an
outline. In the beginning, after you have done some reading and feel like you have some thoughts based on what
you now know, write just 10-15 minutes a day, or maybe four or five solid sentences. Soon you should be able to
increase that writing time, and you will notice that the longer you spend writing, reading what you have written,
and revising, the more authoritative and confident your voice will begin to sound. In 30 minutes a day, you can
finish an entire manuscript in 20 weeks or less if you remain focused, positive, and sure of yourself. Do not focus
on your limitations or they can easily keep you from achieving in areas that you have the potential to achieve in.
Tip #8: Be prepared.
The final tip for writing for publication in graduate school is to be prepared. Be prepared to manage your past, pre-
sent, and future all in one breath. This includes writing, but also family obligations, coursework, relationships with
friends and mentors, budgets, work, and more. Be prepared to break old habits and to cope when you realize you
have been making excuses. Be prepared to hold yourself accountable and to be held accountable by others. Be
prepared to not only step out of, but leap out of, your comfort zone. Writing for publication is new territory for
most people—something we never thought we might be interested in doing. Be prepared to doubt yourself but to
overcome it. Be prepared for criticism and use it effectively. Finally, be prepared to celebrate your successes.
When you get your first acceptance to a conference, celebrate! When you get your first journal article accepted,
celebrate that, too! Share your news with friends, colleagues, and mentors who will encourage you to keep going.
Concluding Thoughts
Using the tips provided in this Writer’s Forum should be helpful for graduate students as they seek to submit man-
uscripts for publication consideration. These tips could also be helpful for some faculty members, particularly
those in the beginning of their careers. Understanding and mastering the writing process never ends. With each
passing year, there are new norms and new standards to learn and to integrate into your own particular style. This
is why being authoritative and confident is particularly important for graduate students who wish to write well; it is
more difficult to make sense of new expectations when you are not yet comfortable with your own writing. Gradu-
ate students and faculty in graduate programs should continue to make quality writing a top priority.
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