A few weeks ago, an undergraduate mentee on a systematic review team asked me if there were materials or tools that I used to improve my academic writing. I sat down to send a quick reply. Several paragraphs later, I realized that almost nothing I wanted to tell her was about writing itself, and that I’d rarely seen this side of writing addressed in the academic writing advice I usually come across, which tends to focus on accountability and goals for the manuscript itself (which are also important, of course, but say little about the relationships and habits that carry a writer through).
Here is what I told her, in the hope it’s useful to other early career researchers (and to mentors advising them).
Be proactive about research teams before you muse about first authorship. I was on a research team in my undergraduate years and became a co-author on a paper as a junior, but I didn’t start writing papers as a first author until my master’s degree. That said, being on research teams early was still tremendously helpful: it gave me an understanding of what is expected of each member of a team (and what is ethical), so that later I knew where and when I could advocate for myself and take a leadership role in drafting a paper. I consider first authorship a form of leadership: it’s not just a byline, and requires coordinating a team of co-authors toward a shared piece of work.
Expect, even embrace, the “sloppy first draft.” The first draft of my first ever first-author paper was exactly what academics in my discipline might call a sloppy first draft. But that’s very much expected when you’ve never done something like it before, and I had gracious mentors who gave constructive feedback. No first draft is ever supposed to be perfect, because the writing process never is. Much of a paper’s quality comes from the rewriting and revision during the co-author feedback stage; that’s where quality increases exponentially. I don’t put pressure on myself to write a “good” first draft for this very reason. I usually just need to get words on the page to start somewhere.
Follow your curiosity to the edges of your discipline. Some of my most joyful writing experiences began not with a call for papers but with a friendship. A dear friend and I bonded over our shared love of using the arts to advance social justice and global health, noticed that few people seemed to be writing about it, and drafted an essay together with colleagues from our fellowship cohort. Everyone contributed sentences here and there, my friend led the process, and a senior author providing a final expert eye. It became one of the most fun experiences I’ve had with writing, and the manuscript was eventually published. Similarly, I wrote a reflective essay on my upbringing and my work in global health, sent it to editors at a journal thinking it was a long shot, and they accepted it. You never know where your writing might resonate with people, or when the time is right to have it out in the world. By “cutting edge,” I don’t mean anything fancy, just something you’re passionate about that you notice folks aren’t really talking about yet.
Treat writing as a muscle. I tell my students who want to improve their writing to keep writing—anything, it doesn’t have to be academic. I write in my journal on most days, even if it’s just five minutes on days I’m not motivated, because if I don’t exercise the muscle, it’s rusty when I want to dive into writing a paper. Journalling isn’t for everyone, and I’m not advocating that it should be; the point is to engage with the writing process as frequently as you can, even if no one but you ever sees those words. I think this matters especially now, as more of us hand our everyday writing—including emails, which absolutely count as writing—over to artificial intelligence tools.
Learn to advocate for yourself, and pay it forward. My mentee and I are privileged to have mentors who advocate for us. But not every early career researcher is: some supervisors are stretched too thin to offer writing leadership roles, and some, unfortunately, simply won’t give that opportunity to a junior colleague. I’ve experienced this myself. My own mentors helped me build the language to advocate for myself, and I now consider it my duty to pass that language on…especially to students who haven’t been shown the unwritten rules of authorship, which is a matter of equity in who gets to become a writer at all.
There isn’t one book or resource that singularly taught me academic writing. What taught me was curiosity, collaboration, saying yes to leadership opportunities (or advocating for them when they weren’t fairly offered), and the discipline of exercising the writing muscle. If you’re a mentor, I’d gently suggest that the most valuable writing resource you can offer a mentee isn’t a style guide. It’s your own story, told honestly, sloppy first drafts and all.
Kelly E. Perry is an environmental epidemiologist and PhD candidate at Duke University working at the intersection of exposure science, environmental justice, and health equity. She uses epidemiologic methods (spanning molecular biomarkers to nationwide cohort studies) to understand how environmental exposures like air pollution, wildfire smoke, and drinking water contaminants shape health, and to inform more protective, equitable policy. Her work spans three threads: the biological mechanisms linking air pollution to inflammation and disease; the physical and mental health impacts of wildland-urban interface fires; and whether current drinking water standards adequately protect against cancer, especially in the communities that bear disproportionate exposure burdens. Across these threads, she prioritizes disenfranchised communities including women and youth and centers resident voices as expertise. Her research frequently pairs quantitative exposure assessment with community-engaged, mixed methods approaches, integrating community-sourced science and lived experience into how studies are designed, interpreted, and returned. She thrives in interdisciplinary, collaborative settings, and she cares deeply about communicating science in ways that are accessible to and shaped by the people it’s meant to serve. Kelly received her master’s in public health from UNC Chapel Hill and her bachelor’s of arts from Vanderbilt University.