A safe space for self-expression and growth

The more I read books about how to write better, the more I reconsider my confidence in writing. There’s still so much to learn!

I know I have told you before that my main motivation for keeping this blog alive is to have an avenue (and a safe space) to improve my writing. Why call this a safe space? Because I can be me without fearing being judged, ridiculed, or canceled, as I’d probably be on social media. Okay, there’s still a chance I’d be because of this blog, but people who don’t like to read the things I write probably haven’t subscribed here anyways, so. . .

So where is this desire to write better coming from?

Well, I am writing a paper on agrivoltaics, and I hope to finish my first draft by September and hopefully submit it to an academic journal within the year. And this would be the third paper I’d write as the first author (Go, women in engineering!), should it be published, and I want it published!

To improve my research writing, I embodied the heart of a lifelong learner. One example is when I was pursuing my master’s. I took the Coursera class on Writing in the Sciences, which gave me a boost of confidence in expressing my ideas on paper. I always thought I was already good at writing, but in reality, after taking that class, I learned that I’m simply better than who I was before.

I need to get better because yesterday’s better might not get me where I’m supposed to be today.

And it’s the same nagging feeling that I have right now, which tells me that there’s still more room to grow. I am not yet that good and I have to get better. So to quell this noise inside my head, I ended up reading the following books:

• Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded (by Joshua Schimel)
• Economical Writing: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey)

I hope this reading will take me where I’m supposed to be, and that’s better writing and a research paper that gets cited.

Wish me the best!