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Show , Spring/Summer 2003 page 13 three- to five-year timelines on it/' Denton said. Jorde said the two types of writing he does present very different challenges. "When you're writing for other scientists, in many ways it's easier because you know the language and they know the language. You can pretty much assume that they've got appropriate background," Jorde said. "Of course the challenge in writing your research results is to be really certain that you haven't made some really silly mistakes, or you're going to get criticized publicly." According to Jorde, textbook writing holds a whole other set of demands. "With the textbook, the challenges are really very different because there you're writing for audiences that don't necessarily have much background," Jorde said. "You should always be thinking about how to make this as accessible as possible to the audience for whom it's intended." He said one of the biggest challenges is trying to simplify the material without sacrificing too much accuracy. "It's just like teaching," Jorde said. "You're always glossing over some details. If you don't, you'll be there forever." He also said it took a lot of time to write the book. "The key in research is to formulate conceptual questions that shape the research task and give meaning to your findings," Goldberg said. "Equally important is writing so that you communicate what you find to the broadest audience possible." One of the challenges for McCance is that developments in her field are progressing rapidly. "It's extremely challenging now because there's so much information," she said. In writing the textbooks, she faces an additional challenge. "The information has become so technical and complex that it's not easy to sit down and write a chapter and put in everything relevant and make it understandable," she said. As for why he writes, Denton said it's been a lifelong vocation. "I started off as a writer. Like most people, we start off as writers in school because that's where the gold stars are given, when we learn to read and write, and so I've developed some facility doing it over the years," he said. "I really enjoy writing. None of what I do would I do if I didn't enjoy it. I simply love to take photographs and I love to write." As for the type of writing he prefers, Denton said he enjoys writing to wider groups of readers. "I prefer writing more toward larger audiences because it provides you the opportunity to use different kinds of writing styles," he said. "I can use a more personal approach. I can use a more journalistic style should I want to, whereas the traditional researcher who's writing for a scientific journal has to write in a certain style. And more typically they're writing to a much smaller audience, too, an audience of specialists." There are various reasons why Jorde writes. "When it comes to publishing our research, if I didn't write I wouldn't have a job," he said. "Most of our salary actually comes from research grants, so it's very much a bread-and-butter issue. If you don't publish, you don't get grants. If you don't get grants, you don't have a job." As for the textbook, Jorde said/'That was more a labor of love, I guess. It's something I hadn't really intended to do, but then a publisher kind of got me interested in it and I finally thought I would give it a try because I do enjoy teaching, and writing a book is just another way of teaching," Jorde said. "I very much enjoy researching and writing," Goldberg said. "I write to learn. Research enables me to learn things I do not know or only know superficially. In doing my research I am able to explore issues and events that have shaped my life and our world. Also, my teaching role is premised on my research. As a teacher, I must go beyond what others have discovered to share my knowledge and enthusiasm with my students. Testing new ideas in the classroom is key to the relationship I have with my students." McCance agrees, and says she wrote her first textbook because she felt there was a need for it. "I prefer doing the textbooks. I'm more challenged by them," she said. "I like writing. Since I was a kid my mother always worked with me on writing, and we had fun." She also discovered that she had the ability, "to condense a large amount of information into a succinct analysis." Craig Denton |
