“What do you have a blog for?”

TL;DR: I like writing.

The long answer isn’t much more complicated than that. I’m a first year PhD student right now, so I already spend plenty of time writing. Writing a literature review; writing applications to animal ethics departments; writing risk assessments; writing introductions to chapters that I haven’t even started the experimental work for; and (unfortunately) writing emails. All of these genres are technical, taxing to write, and not meant to be entertaining – though that doesn’t stop me from trying. Mostly, we technical writers are trying to explain ideas, processes and outcomes in a way that is simultaneously specific, comprehensive, and unable to be misconstrued. I’m about 99% sure this is totally impossible, but we try. Having a blog gives me a great opportunity to write for the reader, instead of writing for the sake of accurate description.

Writing is a brilliant aid to thought. Ideas are distilled by the process of putting them on paper (or a screen). It forces you to arrange all of the disparate, ephemeral thoughts that comprise your idea into a streamlined, logical piece of text to make it more easily digestible by the minds that read it. Consequently, the arrangement of an idea into text new pathways or flaws to be amended that weren’t obvious before. Maybe the conclusions you reach through this process are better than the ones you expected, whatever better means to you. Through writing your idea becomes clear. Just about every form of writing helps you to do this, from technical to creative to pure and simple communicative writing (like a text message). I could rely on writing scientific publications to flesh out my ideas. In fact, I have found that writing the introductions to articles before even buying the experimental equipment helps to fine tune my experimental design. But there are so many things that I want to write on that don’t lend themselves to scientific writing – blogging should let me distill those ideas.

Publishing my writing ought to hold me accountable. I could write my ideas down, save them to my computer, show nobody, and be happy with the fact that I’ve developed them, but I just can’t motivate myself to do that. I’ve tried to keep a habit of journalism which I love the benefits of, but I tend to leave it fall to the wayside for other, more pressing things. The idea of an expectant audience (despite not having one yet) is a huge motivator. Aside from the motivativative force they exert, audiences demand high quality, enjoyable-to-read writing, pushing me to develop my thinking well enough to explain it nicely.

Ultimately, I have a love for ideas, writing and thinking, Blogs give me a little more freedom to express idea outside of my research, and with a bit more playfulness than technical genres afford. So… welcome!