1. Writing How, why, when and what? Professor Tristram Hooley

2. Writing
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Ernest Hemingway

4. Overview
Product
Process
Genre
Audience
Why write

5. Overview
Product
Process
Genre
Audience
Why write

6. Why write?
My main reason for writing is simple: I do not know what I think until I have written it. In conversation one can get away with loose, exploratory thinking, but in writing it down one has to weigh up the arguments and the evidence, and decide what it all means and where one stands. It is hard work, but important; and if published, it adds to the body of knowledge on which others can draw. I commend it to you as a professional practice. Tony Watts, 2014

7. Why do we get you to write?
Students will:
understand the implications for professional practice of their own values and those of their employer, clients, and society;
be reflective career guidance professionals;
have the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to plan, conduct and evaluate careers development intervention;
enable clients and others to access and act upon appropriate information about local and national educational and career opportunities;
have an underpinning knowledge of career theory which will allow them to innovate and adapt their practice to new contexts;
have an awareness of relevant public policy and how it impacts on career development practice;
be able to effectively utilise networks to support their clients;
have the capability to plan, deliver, provide and develop careers provision within organisations;
have the necessary research and information-handling skills for postgraduate study and professional practice; and
be able to enable clients and others to access and act upon appropriate information in the context of the local and national opportunity structure
To develop
To demonstrate

8. Writing and thinking
Writing and thinking are simultaneous and symbiotic.
One does not precede or proceed from the other.
In most cases reading will also be intertwined with writing and thinking.
But there are various kinds of writing and thinking…

9. Overview
Product
Process
Genre
Audience
Why write

10. Who is/are your audience?
Who are they?
What do you know about them?
Why will they be reading?
How will they be reading?
What do they know?
What do they not know?
What impression are you trying to create?

11. Overview
Product
Process
Genre
Audience
Why write

12. What is genre?

13. What genres are we going to ask you to use?
Report/Essay
Reflective and critical account
A improvement plan
Employer study
Resource
Network and partnership map
Reflective portfolio
Independent study/dissertation
Etc. etc.

14. Research the genre How long? What kind of references? What style?
Can you read something in this genre?
Do they use ‘I’ or ‘we’?
What do you know and notice?
What isn’t there?

15. Regardless of genre Clarity Brevity Purposefulness Accuracy
Consistency

16. Theories make things simple
It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.
Albert Einstein - On the Method of Theoretical Physics, the Herbert Spencer Lecture, Oxford, June 10, 1933.

17. Overview
Product
Process
Genre
Audience
Why write

18. Which one is you? Writing takes too long Too many notes
Little or no planning
On the last minute

19. Planning styles Planning writers… make detailed notes
use notes to create an outline of possible content
write a first draft according to the plan
Generative writers…
gather ideas from reading and some use of notes
begin to write early in order to generate ideas
write the first draft quickly and structures it as ideas occur
This is to do with how you plan

20. Planning Tips Planning writers create a plan from your notes
All writers need to
set deadlines for the completion of key stages
analyse the task and brainstorm initial ideas
make focused notes on information gathered
Planning writers
create a plan from your notes
write a first draft
refer back to your plan to review structure
Generative writers
write a first draft from your notes
create a plan from the draft and review structure

21. Overview
Product
Process
Genre
Audience
Why write

22. What should you produce?
The harder you try the more you will have learnt.

23. There is no such thing as a good first draft!
1. Edit for argument
Large scale reorganisation.
Identify your argument and structure.
Address the structural and argumentative weaknesses.
2. Edit for clarity
Control the detail of your writing.
Improve how your prose reads.
Rewrite paragraphs and sentences for clarity.
3. Edit for accuracy
Looks at small but important issues.
Ensure attention to detail.
Proof read.
Check things that you usually get wrong.

24. Tristram Hooley Professor of Career Education
International Centre for Guidance Studies
University of Derby
@pigironjoe
Blog at

25. Questions and exercises
Free writing?
How do you spend your time?
Are you a planning or generative writer?
The features of a good essay.