by RNS | Jan 13, 2018 | Research, Writing
I had cause to reflect this morning as I typed up my latest research notes. I had been feeling a bit sorry for myself on Thursday as I trudged to the Metro from my latest shift in Newcastle City Library. It was raining, I didn’t get a seat on the Metro, and I still hadn’t found my murder victim! Such is the loneliness of the independent historian. But in reality, there is no such thing. Even on such a simple expedition, other people played a role. The editor of the Hexham Historian had sent me a list of potentially useful articles, and the courteous librarian retrieved the material I needed. I came home to emails from strangers I had asked for help to identify obscure characters, and we can add other strangers who offered information on my last trip out to the scene of the murder I am researching. There is of course Carolanne who has been driving me into the middle of nowhere for almost as long as we’ve been married, and recently my cousin Lynne sliced out some of her valuable time to wade through mud, climb a hill, and drive me to look at a blank wall along a muddy lane. So the next time you read a history book and wonder why the writer has included three pages of acknowledgements, now you know!
by RNS | Dec 30, 2017 | Writing
It’s been a while since I posted on my website. There are reasons for that, most of them not worth going into here. But with a new book length project underway and the start of a new year, it might be time to brush off the cobwebs and get this thing moving again. To that end, the plan is for one new book, maybe two, and more writing productivity in general. And while I am happy with my current crop of tutees, I could add one or two more. But as I found out in 2017, plans are one thing, reality quite another. On that cheerful note, Happy New Year for 2018!
by RNS | Nov 23, 2016 | Writing
It is easy to lose track of a blog, or any piece of writing for that matter. In the last two weeks, I have enjoyed a trip to Surrey and to a much lesser extent another knee surgery. The blog slipped away, perhaps as might be expected. Climbing back into the routine of writing, though, is never quite as easy as you think it should be; inertia bends towards the least activity, and there is the added hurdle of reaching too high on your grand comeback. So you find yourself floundering for the right idea to get the writing motor running, something useful or even profound. The answer, of course, is that if you want to write, write! If you are writing for a purpose, a school paper maybe, you can fix your errors when you edit, but you need to start by getting your thoughts on to the screen or paper. If you are writing for a blog, or just to flex the fingers across the keyboard, well you end up with …this!
by RNS | Oct 25, 2016 | Writing
A study in February this year showed that a university graduate in England achieving a 2:1 or above will earn approximately 8% more per annum than a graduate with a 2:2 or below. With the average wage in England at around £27,000 that means an extra £2,700 per year on what can be a very fine academic line. The question is, when do you begin making sure you end up on the right side of that line? If you are anywhere on the education ladder above GCSE the answer is, now! Moreover, as you progress through the system it becomes harder to bridge the gap you need to overcome. If you are on the eve of final exams and you have a steady 2:2, making a 2:1 or higher is almost impossible; however, if you are beginning your A-Levels then the improvements you make now will have a lasting effect, decreasing or eliminating that gap altogether. Indeed, judging by the work I have done with students, the two most significant leaps in writing standards are from GCSE to A-Level and A-Level to University, and for the most part students are left to figure out how to manage those transitions themselves. All of this moves me towards another question; how much would you pay to increase your chances of a bigger salary and all the benefits that come with that? That is why when I am asked why I charge what I do for tutoring writing, my reply is “I charge only for my time”.
by RNS | Oct 18, 2016 | Writing
Most of the tutees I work with are studying for their A-level exams. And most of those are failing to match their expectations. And most of those do not know why. The answer is almost always in their writing. The biggest issue is the perceived connection between complexity and success: the more complex the sentence, the more sophisticated it appears, and the more intelligent the tutee. Indeed, their writing grows ever more complicated even as their grades fall, yet the tutee rarely sees the correlation. My first task when brought in as a ‘firefighter’ is to analyse a tutee’s writing. My second is to simplify. Tutees look on with something approaching horror when my red pen massacres their adverbs and adjectives, and I often feel their eyebrows sink when I bludgeon their colons, semi-colons, and commas. The purpose of all this red ink though is to retune the tutee’s mind to the importance of simple, effective communication. I bring them back to the basic structure of subject, verb, object, from which everything else flows. Once they understand that, once the clutter is gone, my tutees can get on with demonstrating their knowledge and improving their grades. Simples!
