What goes on in a writing workshop or training session?

Picture the scene...
You're feeling nervous, unsure, even a little apprehensive. You've driven to unfamiliar territory, parked your car in an unfamiliar location (will you get clamped? are you sure??) and found your way to the venue of the training session. You look for Reception; thankfully it's located by the door, where you would expect. "Excuse me, can you tell me where Room B304 is please?" you ask. "Of course," the receptionist replies, "you just go along this corridor, through the second set of double doors on your left, up the stairs, then turn right, along the corridor, and it's there on your left opposite the lifts." You say thanks and set off along the corridor she pointed at, having almost instantly forgotten her instructions, looking for some stairs or lifts... finally you find B304. You're 5 minutes late - people are already sat in there looking at a speaker at the front - what will happen when you enter? You push the door open...

Well, I've had this experience twice in the last couple of weeks (one time the lateness was my fault; the other it was not). I went to a half-day session teaching one thing, and a separate unrelated full-day session teaching something else. Both sessions were good, engaging and useful, although neither gave me exactly what I was hoping for.

The first (half-day) session was not what I expected at all; to be honest it was really good, but its description did not match what it delivered, which was a shame as I imagine that the people there - myself included I suppose - didn't get out of it what we were hoping for. I went along wanting and expecting to learn X, but came away having practiced and learnt how to do Y. It's useful being able to do Y, but I was hoping to learn to do X that day, and I've come away still not knowing how to X. If the session was relabelled "How to do Y" instead of "How to do X" then I think more people would get more out of it. I'm talking in vague, general terms here because I don't think it would be fair to criticise an individual or a workshop in the public sphere. Especially since it was useful and enjoyable but just mis-described.

The second session was a one-day writing workshop. I like writing, and I write prolifically: diaries (I've written a diary almost every day since I was 12, and I still do) along with all manner of other stuff like ideas, rants, stories, letters, poems.... and as I'm a hoarder too I've still got just about all of these things. I had a quick look through my box of books a year or so ago and I estimate that I've got about 10 million words in those diaries, poem books and thoughts/rants. That's not including my work from school / college / uni, and my work stuff (teaching materials), books I've written, emails and other digital stuff. That's probably another 5-10 million words. Quite a lot, huh? As a child/teen I wanted to be an author, and I heard someone say "If you want to be a writer, then write - diaries, poems, thoughts, anything - just write, and you will become a writer." So yes in one sense I already am a writer (I've published a few books already which I guess most people haven't accomplished before they start their PhD). 

Amount of stuff I've written

...But in another very real sense, I am not a writer, because the majority of what I write is rubbish. I can write about what happened at the weekend when we went to the park, and I can make up witty poems by replacing the words of songs with other words, and I can write down thoughts I'm wondering about, but is this really a useful PhD skill? I'm not sure that it is. I don't think this is impostor syndrome - it seems genuinely true that my diaries etc are 99% drivel.

Amount of good stuff I've written

Of course, some people - most people, it seems - struggle to write their own stuff; they read and read  and read and make notes, but then putting forward their own argument is a battle for them, and it must be a very real battle; I'm not saying it's not, because writing 100,000 words is no mean feat when you sit and stare at a blank page / screen and don't know what to write.

But my problem is sort of the opposite. I write so much, and then I have to sift through it to find the gems. There are some gems in there, but I have to get my metaphorical hands dirty sifting through seven tons of shit in order to find them; that's bad enough, but knowing that I'm the one who piled all the shit on there in the first place can make it doubly irritating!
  
I think the writing workshop was geared more towards people who struggle to find their 'voice' or to put something of themselves into their research, but as with the other half-day session, I  got something useful out of it. it was suggested that we write out our thesis onto big paper (A0) with coloured sticky notes. I've mapped out my thesis with pen and paper before, but I did it anyway, and suddenly realised that the order of my thesis is back-to-front: the order would work better - and as a narrative - with harm at the front (the 'problem') and consent as the latter chapters (the 'solution'). the sticky notes or the environment or the course leader or something or other helped me realise this.

We also practiced freewriting, which is writing continuously for a set time like 5 minutes, and not stopping. Even if you don't know what to write, write anything at all which comes to mind, and if nothing comes to mind then write that nothing is coming to mind! Since I'm an over-writer I thought freewriting would be my worst enemy, adding more shit onto the already massive shit pile that is my writing - but I think it worked well actually. One of the freewriting briefs was to think of my thesis as a movie and what would be the opening scene (my freewriting on this is shown below - not bad for 5 minutes of braindumping!) Another freewriting brief was to only write questions - again really useful. 

How to write: Put your pen on the paper and move it around, 

making circles and lines which people recognise. Easy, huh?

Both sessions were useful actually, but for different reasons, and although neither gave me the magical thesis-writing epiphany that I was (perhaps unrealistically) hoping for, they will push me forwards to do better. Both sessions have made me think of the thesis as a creative piece as much as it is a work of fact. I can tick all the boxes while still producing something which is fairly dull, or I can still tick the boxes but make it more engaging - the latter may be more difficult but probably more rewarding and more appealing.

One thing I took away from the sessions (besides a couple of biscuits and an apple) was to have a dramatic opening - I tried to recreate one at the start of this blog post. Did it draw you in and make you excited to learn more? (In case you're wondering, I didn't get clamped at either place, thankfully, but the £12 car parking fee which I forked out to park at one of the sessions wasn't far off the price of a parking ticket!)

These training sessions for uni have shown me (or re-shown me, as I think I've thought this before) that sometimes, you get out of it what you put into it. I don't just mean that because I spent £12 on car parking, I got £12 worth of food out of the day, although that may well be true - mmm, biscuits! I mean that even when I didn't get what I expected or hoped for, I got something which I can use to move forwards. 

Freewriting: If my thesis were a film, what would the opening scene look like?

(I corrected the spelling mistakes but left the content intact).

Robots, their red eyes glowing, emerging from the blackened and bloodied bodies piled high, dismembered body parts everywhere, screams and groans from behind them. The robots trampling with their metallic feet onto the dead faces of humans - children, the elderly, disabled people, all being cut to pieces and walked on by robots, the robots destroying people, shooting laser beams in the distance, onto people, into the bloodied eye sockets of dead people, their faces with horror expressions, the way they looked when they died. Then the camera pans out, and we see that it is faded, unreal, in a memory cloud or imagination of an old person, smiling to herself, laughing even, telling her daughter that that’s what she’d imagined when she’d heard that she was going to be looked after by a robot in her old age. The horror of it. The Terminator, I Robot, killer robots, all these fears that the robots would go crazy and hurt people and trample on their bodies and their feelings, couldn’t have been more wrong, because here she is surrounded by human carers working alongside care robots, who are courteous, diligent, and yes even caring. They bring her her food, they take her for a bath, they are polite in their conversations and they are always punctual, never angry, they can play games and have a joke, they always remember the things she says and the way she prefers things to be done, and so in many ways they are far better than human carers, who have their own lives, who can be forgetful, annoyed, or irritable or just having a bad day. The robots aren’t like that.

"You're so lucky!"

I have a few posts which I've labelled with the tag 'stupid things people say'. "You're so lucky" should be placed front and centre. Of course, there is such a thing as luck, and so there are times when "You're so lucky" is an entirely appropriate thing to say.

My lucky dip numbers came up on Lotto.
     "You're so lucky!"

I happen to have been born in a country where medical treatment is free at the point of delivery.
     "You're so lucky!"

I won a game of Snakes and ladders.
     "You're so lucky!"

All of the above are indeed examples of (good) luck, and "you're so lucky" is an appropriate and true thing to say; I have no complaints about events such as these being attributed to luck, as these are genuine examples of luck.

My gripe is when things happen in my (or someone else's) life which are not due to luck, but people say "you're so lucky" nonetheless.

For example, after I finished my undergrad degree, my then boyfriend and I decided we wanted to go travelling. I worked a rubbish job earning £5 an hour, and I took overtime whenever I could. We didn't go out at all for over a year, except for a curry once a fortnight costing £5 each. We seldom drank alcohol, we spent less than £20 on clothes during that year, we had one vehicle between the two of us, and we lived in a shared house which was cheap because it was skanky and in a rough area. I managed to save up £2500 in a year, and we went off to Australia, New Zealand and Thailand. And it's funny, the people who'd called us 'boring' and even 'weird' for really tightening our belts that year were the very same ones who said we were 'lucky' to be able to go travelling abroad. It made my blood boil. No one called us lucky when we were scrimping and saving.

And I get the very same things said to me now. (And I'm sure other hardworking people also get this said to them, and it's so offensive.) I don't have a job at the moment because I'm doing a PhD. So I stay home reading articles and writing stuff on the computer.

"You're so lucky!"

Well no, I'm not lucky. I've always worked hard at my studies and that's why I'm now able to do the PhD.
"Yes but you're lucky that you don't have to worry about money."

No it's not luck. All funded placements are funded on merit; they don't just roll the dice and fund people randomly.
"Yes but it's lucky that your mortgage and bills are low enough to allow you to survive on a £15k stipend."

No, I have a small mortgage because I bought this house with a big deposit of my own money which I'd saved up by working hard and spending little. I could have chosen a more expensive (and bigger) house with larger mortgage payments, but I chose not to. So it's not luck that I have low mortgage payments. And I still choose not to spend frivolously; I buy budget brands and I don't go out for expensive meals and nights/days out. That's not luck.

it's so offensive when people say that career success and academic success are down to luck; it's a way of saying "you don't really deserve your success - it's just luck that you're successful". If someone has got rich by winning the lottery or inheritance, then yes that is lucky, but most people are where they are in life because of what they've done with their lives. That goes for people at both ends of the spectrum. it is lucky that David Beckham had a successful football career or that Ed Sheeran is having a successful music career? Someone doesn't become an amazing footballer or a have albums selling tens of millions of copies because they're lucky. Equally, someone doesn't become a heroin addict or a murderer by chance/luck alone. People might genetically inherit a small amount of 'natural talent' or an 'addictive personality', but they make the choice to practice football, promote their singing, or to take heroin. There are a few exceptions to the rule: people who were injected with heroin against their wishes, or people whose family have had enough money to help them on their way to success, but these people are the exceptions rather than the rule.

In fact there are few things in life which are genuinely and completely down to luck. I concede that it was lucky for me to have been born in England in the late 20th century to hardworking parents who loved me and looked after me. I've also had the lucky privileges of being white-skinned, average-looking, and heterosexual. Whether these lucky privileges are cancelled put by the 'unlucky' facts that I'm female, working class and I've been disabled/in poor health for half of my life, I don't really know. But it seems to me that by and large, our lives are what we make them, and not a lot of luck is involved in repeated success or failure.

People should think twice before saying "you're so lucky" because much of what happens to us in life is not due to luck: attributing someone's success to mere luck is just another way of telling them they don't deserve to be where they are. It that's what you want to tell someone, then fine, go for it, as there are definitely cases of people who haven't worked for their success (or haven't worked to avoid their failure) but the lives of most of us regular people are affected far more by effort than luck.

Should we ban some Christmas songs?

Baby it's cold outside has met with some controversy recently, with some radio stations refusing to play it because it endorses pressuring women into sex, or even date rape. A couple of weeks ago, before I'd heard this news, I was musing to myself that perhaps the lyrics should be: "I really can't stay / OK fair enough, take care." And then the rest of the song could be an instrumental! I find Tom Jones a bit creepy, and the thought of him trying to convince a less than willing young lady to spend the night turns my stomach.

A man who just won't take no for an answer in real life might be a problem... But this is a song, not real life. Tom Jones' creepiness notwithstanding, it seems to me that really, the song needn't be interpreted as date rape, as some people have suggested. I would think that many of us in relationships have had conversations where one partner says they need to go somewhere, and the other tries to convince them to stay. So I'm not convinced that the song is endorsing anything untoward, and I don't think it needs to be banned.

But what of the other contenders for most offensive Christmas song? People have objected to Do they know it's Christmas and Fairytale of New York too.

Do they know its Christmas has been torn to shreds. It's been accused of treating Africa as one homogenous culture, and making factually inaccurate claims (no rivers flow - what about the Nile? There won't be snow in Africa - what about atop Kilimanjaro?) And it's been charged with being patronising (do they know its Christmas? Well yes they probably do, given how many Africans are Christians) and it is said to propagate the "white saviour" mentality. I discussed this issue in another post, in relation to the issue that misinformation and white saviour mentalities help to secure more donations for Comic Relief, and I argued that documentary footage for the programme ought to be honest even if fewer donations are received as a result. But a charity song seems a different kettle of fish, where factual accuracy seems less important. Or as Geldof so eloquently put it "It's a pop song, not a doctoral thesis. They [critics] can fuck off." So Do they know it's Christmas can stay off the naughty list, methinks.

Fairytale of New York is about two people who fall in love, then it all turns sour. With gambling, alcoholism, and epithets such as 'slut' and 'faggot', it doesn't seem the most likely contender for a favourite Christmas song - yet it is. Those words are offensive, but why should that make us ban a song? Bleep it if necessary. I must admit that when I heard my little boy singing "you scumbag, you maggot..." I did think oh no please don't say it. But he followed it up with "you piece of old junk" (which he obviously borrowed from the previous verse - and cleaned up the language too!)

But songs with dodgy lyrics aren't a specifically Christmassy problem. I had the same feeling when I heard him singing "for 24 years I've been living next door to Alice. Alice? Who..." But again, mercifully, his innocent little ears told him the lyrics which followed were "Alice? Who's the talking Alice?" So yes, Fairytale of New York does have some words in it we don't want our kids to learn, but it's still a great Christmas song (and one of my son's favourites), and deserves to be played. I heard a version by Ronan Keating which used the lyrics "you're cheap and you're haggard" instead of "you cheap lousy faggot", so that should hopefully satisfy critics.

"But Christmas is wholesome"

There are thousands of songs out there with offensive themes and explicit lyrics. It seems to me that rap songs are frequently about knife crime, drive-by shootings, nonconsensual sex, and that the "songs" are littered with words like bitch, ho, ni**er and of course the F word. But these songs are widely available and widely enjoyed. Compared to rap music, Fairytale of New York is like a nursery rhyme (not Baa baa black sheep though, that song is as offensive as black coffee and a blackboard.)

But maybe the objection to Fairytale but not to rap songs is grounded in the idea that Christmas songs ought to be more wholesome than non-Christmas songs?

Well...

I was born and raised in Macclesfield; a nondescript northern town whose only real claim to fame is the Macc Lads - a rock band whose songs have some... um... controversial lyrics. Most of their songs are about getting drunk, sex, chips and gravy, fighting, and bodily functions. To give you a flavour, here's an excerpt from the Macc Lads' song Fluffy Pup "I spent last night tryna chuck me bird / But she were clinging to me leg like a lovesick turd / I said "Your tits are too small and your legs are too short / I want a fit bird from Sunday Sport / I can't hear me records when you sit on me face" […] "You can cook / you can fuck / you can do the washing up / but I've had enough / go on, fuck off..."

You probably wouldn't expect a band like the Macc Lads to produce a Christmas song, but they did. When Feed the World was in the charts back in 1985, lead singer and lyricist Muttley Macc Lad didn't pass up the opportunity to offend, and wrote a little Christmas ditty called Feed your face. Here's an excerpt: "Watching Live Aid 'Sit up straight you scruffy ni**er' [...] Feeling peckish so I went down the chippy, bought some pies and pasties / didn't give any to the starving ni**ers so I'm a fucking Nazi / Feed your face, don't give them a second thought". Now that is an example of an offensive Christmas song which doesn't get much air time. Geldof quite rightly slammed it. But should the Macc Lads' song be banned? No, I think not. (If you find the N word as objectionable as I do, then it's worth reminding ourselves that rap uses this word with far greater frequency than the Macc Lads do - in fact, I think this may be their only use of the term.) It's just music, and - like rap - people should, generally speaking, be allowed to listen to what they please.

John Stuart Mill (I love Mill!) in On Liberty wrote that offence is not harm. There should be freedom of speech, and that involves the freedom to offend. As ever, Mill hits the nail on the head. You might be offended by Feed your face, Feed the world, or indeed Baa baa black sheep, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to exist.

Am I a hypocrite?

My last blog post was calling for books about child abuse to be banned, and now here I am supporting artistic freedom - am I being hypocritical? Well, I think not, and actually, last week's argument and this week's argument are very similar.

Last week:
X is similar to Y
X is banned (illegal)
Therefore Y should be banned (illegal)
(Where X was child porn, and Y was child abuse books)

This week:
X is similar to Y
X is not banned
Therefore Y should not be banned
(Where X is rap music, the Macc Lads etc, and Y is the Fairytale of New York etc)

All I'm calling for is consistency in what we ban or don't ban. If music is an area where we support artistic freedom to the extent that we allow music about drive-by shootings and fights, then a song about a man trying to get a woman to spend the night, or a song which uses the word "faggot" is small fry.

If someone were to turn my argument against me and call for consistency in my beliefs, they'd need to show that a book about child abuse has enough in common with a Christmas pop song that they ought to be treated the same. I think Socrates himself would struggle to show that.

Conclusion

Some well-loved Christmas songs have the odd word or sentiment which some might find at odds with 2018 political correctness, but if people enjoy listening to such songs, let them. It's Christmas after all, live and let live.

If you aren't in the PC brigade, then you might like this tongue in cheek list of offensive Christmas songs. Some amusing examples are "folks dressed up like Eskimos" = cultural appropriation;  "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake" = Santa is a peeping Tom. And how about "Children gays open-mouthed, taken by surprise" = supporting homosexual abuse of children.

Happy Christmas.

Stop the books about child abuse

Wander around a bookshop and it won't be difficult to find masses and masses of books about child abuse. Amazon even has a specific section dedicated to books about child abuse! I think "A child called it" was an early pioneer of this genre, with its black and white photo of a sad-looking child and its provocative title, it became a bestseller. Since then, hundreds of child abuse books have followed. Many follow the example of pale backgrounds, washed-out photos of sad-looking children, and provocative or disturbing titles like "A special place" "Stop, Daddy, stop" and "Our little secret". These books are obviously flying off the shelves, because each year, yet more books about child abuse pop up, ready to be consumed by people who enjoy reading about child abuse.

Am I the only one who finds this disturbing?

Child pornography is illegal. You wouldn't find it on the shelves at eye level in Asda, nor would there be a whole section dedicated to it in Waterstones - and rightly so. People who abuse children are the scum of the earth, and people who want to look at images or videos of child abuse are a pretty close second. So why is it seemingly perfectly acceptable to read about child abuse in graphic detail? People wouldn't buy their grandad a subscription to a child porn website for Christmas, so why do they buy their granny yet another book which describes child sex abuse?

Below I consider and reject several possible reasons for thinking that looking at child pornography and reading about child abuse are morally distinct. Perhaps we should stop short of making these books illegal, but I do think we should stop these books from adorning the shelves in bookshops, and carefully monitor people who buy or read such books.

It's not all sexual

OK so not all books about child abuse are about sexual abuse; most are "merely" about emotional and physical abuse, and neglect. But some books are about sexual abuse, and those are my main targets in this post.

And as an aside, although there might not be a specific law against watching people beat, torture, kill, emotionally abuse or neglect their children, we might (rightly) think that people who enjoy watching these things are doing something morally troubling, if not wholly wrong. Yet we seem to think it's fine for people to read about all these types of abuse: Why? Some possible reasons are discussed below.

Visual / literary medium

Firstly, child porn is visual, whereas child abuse books are literary. Perhaps we differentiate between them because we think it's wrong to look at abuse, but OK to read about abuse? This is probably a distinction that most people do make, but without good reason.

Suppose there was a website where paedophiles share stories about the sexual things they've done to children (sadly, such websites probably do exist). If a person were to spend an evening reading the stories on such a website - but without looking at any pictures - I think we would view this person as morally bereft, and almost as bad (if not just as bad) as someone who looks at child porn. So this makes me think that it's not just about the distinction between the visual / literary medium.

The author

So if it's not the visual/literary distinction, then maybe it's because most child porn is created by the perpetrator, and shown from the position of the perpetrator, whereas child abuse books are told from the point of view of the victim.

Or at least, that's what we're supposed to think. How many readers really check whether the author of a book is the victim? Perhaps some authors of child abuse books are actually perpetrators, retelling the abuse they've committed from the point of view of their victim. Or perhaps the stories are fictional, the author detailing their appalling sexual fantasies in literary form. I imagine that at least some of the child abuse books on sale are as a matter of fact written by paedophiles. Still think it's OK to read these books?

What if it turns out that some child porn photos / videos are shared online by the child themselves? This wouldn't be enormously surprising, given that 'sexting' is a thing among tweens and teens: they share pictures of themselves naked or performing sex acts on snapchat, whatsapp, and other platforms. But surely we wouldn't think that it's OK for someone to view these images of child porn simply because the child (even if they've now grown up) was complicit in the sharing of the images? Someone who shares images of themselves being on the receiving end of child sexual abuse is (as far as the law is concerned) just as guilty as anyone else who shares images of abuse.

So if some books are written by paedophiles, and some child porn is shared by the victims, then the "who is the author" argument doesn't help us to distinguish between the morally acceptable and the morally unacceptable, if we're wanting to show that books are permissible but images are not.

Why people read / watch

So maybe the reason we distinguish between child porn and child abuse books is because of the reasons why people read or look at them. I think the assumption is that people (usually men) who look at child porn photos and videos are doing it for sexual excitement and gratification: they find the images arousing. Whereas the assumption with child abuse books is that the people (usually women) who read them are reading it with sympathy and horror; they come away from the book thinking how terrible the abuse was.

But suppose that someone who reads a lot of child abuse books with sadness and horror decides to start looking at child porn with sadness and horror too. Suppose they go online and seek out horrible videos of child abuse and rape, and they sit there watching them feeling sad and disgusted with what they're seeing. I think we'd see such behaviour as decidedly odd, if not wrong and  criminal. We'd say "you shouldn't look at child porn, even if you're looking at it in sympathy".

And suppose a paedophile enjoys reading the child abuse books for sexual gratification. Suppose he sees the books as a way of indulging his sexual fantasies in a legal way. Suppose the rape and abuse scenes in the child abuse books are so arousing for him that he masturbates while reading them. I bet some people do do this. I think we would see this as morally troubling that someone would find these books arousing. I don't think we'd just shrug and say well it's fine because it's only a piece of literature, and buy him another child abuse book for Christmas.

This is probably the most convincing of the arguments, but given that we don't know the real reasons why someone looks at or reads about child abuse, it will be tricky for us to distinguish between those who are looking at or reading about child abuse with sympathy, and those who find it exciting. So we revert back to saying pictures-and-videos - bad, books - good.

No legal restriction on books

Perhaps the only reason why we feel that looking at photos of child abuse is wrong (but books about child abuse are fine) is simply because the former is illegal and the latter is not.  Those who look at child abuse pictures do so in secret, in their own homes, through untraceable proxies. They keep it secret from family and friends, and if they are caught with all that child porn, they'll be prosecuted. It's not socially acceptable to sit on a train watching videos of child porn. Whereas reading child abuse books is legal; people who read them don't need to do so in secret, and if the police discover that someone owns a lot of child abuse books, nothing happens. It's (seemingly) socially acceptable to sit on a train reading a book about child abuse.

But laws are fairly arbitrary, and change over time and borders. In some countries, (Japan, perhaps?) there are no laws against child abuse (in countries where child marriage is practiced, it is acceptable for a man to have sex with a little girl so long as he is married to her). And there are probably some countries where child abuse books are illegal. If UK laws had been the other way around, and it was illegal to read child abuse books, but legal to view child porn, then would public opinion switch too? I think it probably would. If people secretly went online to read child abuse stories, but child porn magazines adorned the shelves of Sainsbury's, would our opinions switch too? I think they would, and if I'm right, then we are fickle and uncommitted to our beliefs, proving that there is not much of a distinction between child porn and child abuse books; it's just legal precedent and social convention.

All together now

A final possibility is that some or all of the above reasons group together to distinguish child porn from child abuse books. Child porn is visual, illegal, usually created by abusers, and the viewers are (mostly) men who are watching it for sexual gratification. Child abuse books are literary, legal, usually created by victims, and the readers are (mostly) women who are reading it with sympathy.

When put like that, the argument seems more convincing... but if as I've shown above, each of the constituent parts of the argument are unconvincing, then merely adding several unconvincing arguments together doesn't really make it convincing. Five wrongs don't make a right.

Conclusion

It doesn't look like the law or public opinion on this pseudo-distinction between child porn and child abuse books is going to change any time soon. It looks as though, for the foreseeable future, looking at child porn will (rightly) be seen as abhorrent and immoral, but reading about child abuse will (wrongly) be seen as a perfectly legitimate pastime.

Am I the only one who finds this distinction weird? I don't know. But whenever I meet someone who enjoys reading books describing child abuse, I can't help but feel disturbed, and I wonder why they are reading these books. If you ask me, books which describe child abuse in graphic detail should not be adorning the shelves of supermarkets and bookshops, available for anyone of any age to buy, read, and enjoy. I suggest that the readers of child abuse books should be viewed with suspicion, and perhaps even scrutinised by the police.

Zotero - reference management software review

I've been writing my thesis - but not writing it "up" - for a couple of months, and although I've previously managed all my references manually, I decided that I'd use some reference management software as I wrote my PhD thesis.

I've previously been happy to write all my references the old fashioned way - by looking at the book / journal, and writing down the salient information in the bibliography, and writing out my in-text citations manually. This method has always served me well and because I am a pedant when it comes to things like spelling, grammar, punctuation and indeed referencing, I have been able to manage my references flawlessly in this way. I haven't made mistakes because I know how to reference (Harvard-style) and so I continued with the mindset of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

However, since the number of references I'll probably be using for my PhD thesis was likely to be far greater than those I used for my essays and MA thesis, I decided that I'd start using some reference management software to help me keep track of it all. I'm glad I've taken the plunge, because even at this early stage, I already have 74 items in my reference list! (I've not fully read all of them yet though.)

So I decided that before I got started on my thesis, I'd compare / try a few reference management software (RMS) programs and decide on one which I was happy with. I probably spent nearly 2 days faffing around with RMS and making up my mind, but I was hopeful then - and I'm convinced now - that that was time well spent.

The RMS I settled on was Zotero. Below I list some of the other main RMS and why I chose not to use them:

• Refworks - this was the one which I had heard of most, and so was the one I was originally intending to use. Then I learned that unless your university had a subscription to it, individual students had to pay to use it (and that the University of Nottingham does not have a subscription to it). This quickly put me off Refworks.

• Endnote - The University of Nottingham does have a subscription to Endnote, so this became top of my list. I tried to follow the instructions I found for how to set up an account, and the instructions were unfathomable (for starters, they referred to a different version of Windows than the one on the library PC I was using, so were impossible to follow). I tried to get some help from an online chat person/bot, and from the IT support people in the library, but they struggled to use it too. This is not a criticism of them, but a criticism of Endnote, as I usually find them to be really knowledgeable and helpful. At length, with the help of an IT support person, a YouTube video, and an online help sheet, we finally managed to get the program running. I thought it'd be plain sailing after that, but it wasn't. The way to get an article onto Endnote seemed to involve a very complex procedure of searching an online library database... well, some of the sources I'd already taken a look at aren't on an online library database, and working out how to get these sources onto Endnote seemed impossible to me. Added to which, the 'main' version of Endnote could only be accessed from university PCs, and I'm likely to be doing most of my work from home. So I gave up on Endnote.

Once I'd dismissed these two 'big names', it was a question of doing some comparisons of the alternatives. I looked at a few online comparisons, and screenshots of different RMS systems, and downloaded a couple to try. I can't remember which ones (so this part of the blog post isn't that enlightening, as I can't recall why I dismissed Mendeley, BibTex and whatever else. What I can do is explain why I chose Zotero and why I like it).

Zotero - just click the Download button and Bob's your uncle.

Reasons why I like / chose Zotero

1. It's easy to use. This reason is up there front and centre of the reasons I chose Zotero. Here's how you do it: (1) go to Zotero website. (2) Download Zotero software that takes about 1 minute. (3) Start using it straight away. The Word plugin only has 5 buttons on it (add/edit citation, add/edit bibliography, refresh, unlink citations, and settings). It did take a little playing around with to work out all the functions, but more on that later.
2. Metadata is automatically uploaded to Zotero. Until I looked into RMS, I didn't even know what metadata was (data about data, I would have assumed). Metadata is in fact the details of a document such as its title, authors, publisher, date, URL, DOI, and suchlike. Having tried a few RM systems, it became evident to me that the sheer amount of time it can take to add metadata is just ridiculous on some applications. It can take a minute or two - at least - to write out all the metadata for one file. When that's multiplied by the possibly 300+ sources I may use during the course of my PhD, I realised that that would be a lot of time wasted and a lot of tedium suffered. The fact that Zotero automatically detects and uploads all the metadata on almost every file you drag and drop onto it was a godsend to me: "future me will thank me for this" I thought, and indeed I am grateful to past-me for choosing software which automatically sorts the metadata. And when metadata isn't detected (which has only happened on one online source so far) it's easy enough to enter it yourself with Zotero.
3. Zotero allows me to upload PDFs and other files whilst keeping those files on my computer. This is a must for me, because tech isn't always as trustworthy as we'd like it to be (yeah, I know my PhD thesis is about why we should trust tech to care for the elderly, but this is an entirely different issue!) If a company suddenly goes offline, into liquidation, etc, then I'd like to be able to have all - or at least, many - of my files stored offline on my hard drive as possible. Zotero ticks this box whereas so many other RM systems don't. This also appeals to me because I like to edit my PDFs with notes and symbols and things which aren't available in some RMS dedicated editors. eg some of the other RMS will allow you to edit a PDF, but only within the RMS program; if you then try to view that PDF in Adobe or similar, you can't see any of your notes. Or, the software allows you to highlight but not annotate PDFs on the page itself. Zotero allows me to edit documents with Adobe, Nitro or any other program, and then upload them as they are.
4. The code for Zotero is open-source. I'm not a software buff but apparently this means something along the lines of: if Zotero goes out of business, another company could use the same code to make the same program and so I'd still be able to use it. Or something like that.
5. Zotero is cloud-based, so wherever I am, I can access my saved sources, and the files can be viewed and accessed even if the source file is not on that computer. For example, say I annotate a PDF which is held on my home computer, and then I drag and drop it onto Zotero. The file is still on my home computer, but now if I go into uni and use a PC in the library, I can access and edit the very same PDF (with my notes already one it) even though it is not saved on that uni PC. This is a great feature which I didn't even realise was a feature when I started using it, but I find it really good. Most RMS is cloud-based, but still...
6. There's a Chrome plugin which allows you to upload sources direct from the web. The plugin takes about 30 seconds to download and sits right next to the URL bar. The program detects what type of page is being viewed (eg a news article, journal article, blog etc - I guess that's the metadata doing its job again!) and so when you click the icon, it knows what metadata is needed (date of publication, issue number, etc.) Amazing!
7. Sources of various different types can be uploaded. PDFs are standard for RMS, obviously, but some of the other RM programs I came across couldn't seem to handle a news website, let alone a Word document, powerpoint presentation, TV programme or a jpeg image. Zotero can handle any and all of these - and lots of others too.
8. I can use it as a cloud-based way of saving my own work. Because Zotero can handle Word documents, I made a folder within Zotero called 'my work' and now I upload my work to it at the end of each day as an additional cloud-based backup in case my house burns to the ground during the night. I suppose this wasn't the intention of Zotero, but it's a nice feature I'm utilising for my own gain.
9. It's easy to write notes and summaries. There's a text box on the right-hand side which you can write whatever you like into. I'm using it to write notes and summaries of documents. I know this is standard in almost all RMS, but it's obviously a useful feature!
10. It's possible to tag sources and link sources to one another. This is probably a simple feature which may be available in other RMS, but it's useful nonetheless. For example, I have scanned and uploaded a few different chapters of the same book, and although each chapter is written by a different author, I wanted them to be linked to one another, so that was easily done. I've also tagged my sources with various content-related tags like 'consent' and 'harm', but also 'fully read' and 'not yet read' to help me keep track of what I have and have not read. As one would expect, you can search for particular tags.

Screenshot of some of my Zotero sources at the moment

One wish

I saw on one RMS - I forget which now - that whenever you highlighted some text within a document, it transferred the quote to some sort of clipboard / note-taker interface. This seems like a really useful feature which it would be quite nice if Zotero had, but it doesn't. I suppose that's because it is a file depository rather than a file editor. My highlighting has been done in Adobe/Nitro, and not through Zotero itself; Zotero essentially just keeps a copy of the file. It's not too great a problem though, because it's still easy to cut and paste quotes if I want them.

Using Zotero

For the most part, Zotero is pretty easy to use. you drag and drop the files you want into the window as shown above. You download the Word plugin, and when you want to add a citation, you just click 'Add citation', type in the author or title you want to cite, add the page number, and press Enter. Pretty simple. And indeed far simpler than the other RM systems I had a go at.

But of course, there are always some times when there are slightly trickier things that one wants to do, like adding metadata, having one source with multiple sources attached to it, and it wasn't particularly easy to find Zotero help / guides on how to do these twiddly bits. I did find one help guide from Zotero, but this isn't exhaustive. I worked it out for myself though and wrote it down - here is my help sheet. Anyway, I've found Zotero to be pretty intuitive and easy to use, and I'm glad I took the time to choose a RMS programme which suited me and what I wanted. I definitely have no complaints so far.

Black Friday: No thanks - just bargains

It's that time of year again - Black Friday. The time of year when people clamour for bargains, enthusiastically elbowing others out of the way in a frenzy of desperation to save a few quid buying consumer goods at knock-down prices. That time of year when, for a week or more, people are glued to their smart devices (even more so than usual), in the crucial search for stuff.

Apparently, Black Friday has been with us in England for eight years now. It's long been an American trend; it's the Friday after Thanksgiving. But whilst Brits - and probably numerous other countries - have been only too happy to adopt the greedy fight for cheap electronics that encapsulates Black Friday, we seem to have no interest at all in the ethos which precedes it in America. We don't want to give thanks; we just want bargains.

I know that Thanksgiving has its history in colonialism, pilgrims, and has a religious spin to it, but even though I'm an atheist and a Brit, I think there is something worthwhile in the festival which we would do well to adopt. A general disposition of gratefulness is something that is probably quite good for one's mental health. Life is busy and it's no wonder that there's been a growth in mindfulness and relaxing activities like adult colouring books, meditation, yoga etc. Reminding ourselves of everything we are grateful for is a worthwhile exercise in itself, even if we don't say it out loud around a table full of turkey and pumpkin pie the way Americans do. I know I'm grateful for good health, my wonderful son who brings joy and meaning to my life, and for my family and friends. I'm grateful that I've recently started a relationship after nearly 7 years of being single. And I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to study for a PhD and that I'm being funded to do so.

All of this gratitude - the very essence of Thanksgiving - seems intrinsically valuable, and it's a real shame we don't adopt this festival. But what's more sad is that we're only too happy to adopt Black Friday, the fight for cut price electronics, clothing and suchlike, whereby we're implicitly reinforcing in ourselves the idea that garnering more stuff will make us happier.

Perhaps I'm being too cynical: perhaps everyone uses Black Friday (which has somehow morphed into a week or more of sales) to purchase gifts for their loved ones in time for Christmas. And they use these gifts to spread the love and bring about gratefulness, wellbeing and happiness in those around them. Yes, that probably happens to some extent. But I just don't think that these HD TV's and Playstations and iPhones are all being given as gifts. And maybe it's none of my business - if people want to buy an iPhone cheaply for themselves then why shouldn't they? Well, yes, my revulsion at the fight for bargains is not iron-clad proof that Black Friday is somehow morally wrong.

I just wish that we would adopt the disposition of gratefulness for what we already have, and appreciate that the people around us are what really makes life worth living.

Thesis-writing book reviews

I've now read these four books about thesis-writing for PhD study, and I share my thoughts on each of them below.

• Murray (2017) How to write a thesis (4th ed). Open UP Study Skills. Open University Press
• Carter, Kelly, and Brailsford (2012) Structuring your research thesis. Palgrave Research Skills. Palgrave Macmillan
• Oliver (2008) Writing your thesis (2nd ed). Sage Study Skills. Sage Publications
• Williams, Bethell, Lawton, Parfitt, Richardson, and Rowe (2010) Planning your PhD. Pocket Study Skills. Palgrave Macmillan

I've also bought "How to survive your viva" by Murray, but I haven't yet read it; I'll review it at a later date perhaps.

Murray (2017) How to write a thesis

This is a great book - the best of the four - and well worth the £20 I paid for it. I don't often write or highlight in books, but with this one I did because there are some parts of it which are stand-out gems of advice that I wanted to be able to find again and again.

I'd say that this book would be of particular use to people who might find it difficult to get started writing (or continue writing) or people who believe that they have nothing to write about (yet), because the book is filled with writing prompts, ways to get started, ways of planning, and ways of structuring your work. It's written for a generalist audience, but the suggested exercises seem flexible enough that there can be something useful for everyone, whether they are writing about biochemistry, medieval literature, or international politics. With 311 pages, it is bursting with useful tips, advice and information for thesis-writers.

I'm not someone who finds it difficult to get started writing, but I've still found the book really useful - and full of encouragement too! Almost every page has something really useful on it, and I can't praise this book enough. Here's a quote:

"In writing a thesis, we are entering a debate; there are many people who will not agree with our writing. Not only can we not ignore the work of those who are likely to disagree with us, but we must directly address it. We have to articulate the basis of such disagreements in our writing, showing where our work fits into the debate." (p121)

There are sections on getting started, structuring, becoming a 'serial writer', editing and revising work, and some information about the Viva. The only 'criticism' I have of the book is the suggestion that we should try to write 1,000 words a day. You don't need to be doing your PhD in maths to realise that 1,000 words a day for 3 years is over a million words! I suppose many people may struggle to write and so the chance of this actually happening to them is minimal: for me, over-writing is a genuine danger. Typically my way of producing the 4,000-word essays for my MA studies was to write an essay of around 15,000 words, then to cut it down and distill it. The thought of distilling 1,000,000 words into 70,000 words is unappealing, and so I'll take Murray's advice with a pinch of salt.

Nonetheless this book is fantastic, and something I'm sure I'll return to again and again throughout the next three years.

Carter, Kelly and Brailsford (2012) Structuring your research thesis

I found this book a bit weird. It is supposedly written for a generalist audience, as one would expect, but in some parts of it the advice seems very specific to particular domains. There is also a lot of what I can only describe as 'waffle' - which would be fine if it were a lengthy book which can afford to go off-piste from time to time, but with only 84 pages I would say it should stick rigidly to the point, which it doesn't seem to manage.

Something else which bothered me is the style in which it is written. I know it is aimed at an educated audience, but nonetheless, the goal of a textbook - any textbook - should be to explain what needs to be explained in the most efficient way possible; a textbook is not (or should not be) a chance for the authors to show off their articulacy with flowery language unless it is really necessary to the cause. This doesn't necessarily mean dumbing down, but it does mean using concise language where possible. Some sections of this book were unnecessarily verbose - here's a quote which is supposedly about how to make a common thread run through your thesis:

"Because it makes use of the complex semiotics of poetic language, metaphor can also be a strong structuring device. Metaphors that have a cultural underpinning enable a researcher to inhabit a social or cultural space simultaneously with their academic one. Cultural metaphors demonstrate the way that metaphor can contribute to methodology, and our examples make explicit the deep-level functioning of metaphor to carry one set of connotative meaning into another field." (p8)

I am struggling to know what the take-home advice of this paragraph is, and this quote is by no means an isolated cherry-picked example of the way this book is written. Whilst there are some parts of the book which may be of use to a thesis writer, I found the general tone of the book strange and at times almost impenetrable. And so given its price and low page count, I would say that - unusually for the Palgrave study books - this is just not worth the money.

Oliver (2008) Writing your thesis

[NOTE - There's now a third edition of this book, but I have the second edition pictured here.]

This book is really useful, and is a really good accompaniment to Rowena Murray's book, because much (around half?) of the material in this book isn't covered in the Murray book. For example, logistical and technical advice about fonts, layout, use of Latin terms, referencing, academic conventions and suchlike. There's also a useful chapter on working with supervisors and examiners. 

I think that if you're a person who is motivated and ready to start writing, then this book is probably even better than the Murray textbook. But this book does assume a certain readiness to begin study, which not all people will feel. It's fairly concisely written  and provides a happy medium (174 pages) between the brevity of the Williams book (below) and the detail of the Murray book. Here's a nice quote about thesis introductions:

"This [the Introduction] is a very significant chapter in the thesis. As it is the first chapter which is read by the examiners, it inevitably creates an impression in their minds about the writing style of the student, and of the broad nature of the thesis. The main purpose of the introduction is to provide the reader with an overview of the research study, and of the key factors which were influential in its inception. It sets the scene for the reader, providing a glimpse of the setting for the research and of the methodology. It should also provide a statement of the aims of the thesis." (p84)

The down-side of this book (for me as a Philosophy student, at least) is that the chapters on the literature review and methodology were largely irrelevant for me. Notwithstanding these chapters, the book as a whole is a very useful one I'll no doubt return to several times throughout my doctoral study. 

Williams et al (2010) Planning your PhD

This book is only tiny - smaller than A6 - and only 120 pages, but it packs a lot in. Brevity and ease of use are its assets.

As the title suggests, its focus is on planning and preparing for a PhD, and it's probably of most use to those who have not yet written a PhD research proposal. Once you've written a proposal and had it accepted, most of this book becomes redundant (I should have bought it before I wrote the proposal to have got the most out of it!)

Nevertheless, there are a few pages (perhaps 15 - but remember that each page only has around 300 words on it!) about introductions, literature reviews, attending conferences and publishing in journals, which are brief but of use. This book by itself would be insufficient to use as a guide to writing a PhD thesis, but given that its intention is to help you plan your PhD, it does exactly what it says on the (very small!) tin.