PhD research publications, authorship disputes and writing blocks

Graduate students occasionally encounter conflict with an advisor who does not accord them the authorial credit they believe they deserve. This problem can emerge in a number of ways.

Sometimes a student feels that their original idea, data or written work is taken by an advisor who then presents the work as his/her own, or who gives credit to another student, without adequately acknowledging the first student’s contributions.

A student may have in inflated or misguided notion about the extent of their contribution, which also puts them in conflict with an advisor or peer. At other times it’s a challenging to try to clearly determine who contributed what to a research product, especially when there are multiple contributors over a lengthy period of time.

 

There are also situations involving multi-authored papers in the sciences where disputes arise about what order the authors should be listed in. An advisor has wide discretion to determine how a paper for publication will be presented, and a student may feel that their role is not fully noted in the final product.

In more extreme cases, a student may feel that they are held hostage by an advisor who threatens their future recommendation and professional future unless they agree to accept unfair treatment regarding written acknowledgments of their contributions. This may happen to a student who is especially gifted, and whose ideas are valuable to the advisor for promoting his/her career ambitions.

Written publications are the currency for career opportunities in academia, and it’s to be expected that everyone involved in research writing will have a desire to have it serve their career, as well as to advance the discipline they are involved in. Graduate students generally have to achieve well with their writing to be successful in their program and job search, but they frequently have limited power in the decisions that are made about their written work.

The authority regarding evaluating a graduate student’s work lies with their advisor, which is appropriate and right, unless the quality of that mentor’s moral fiber and character is compromised. A graduate student’s future is highly contingent on receiving a good recommendation from their primary mentor, especially in academic careers, and consequently it’s often highly risky for the student to openly confront perceived unfairness around authorship.

A student may also find it hard to write if they feel their work or ideas will be exploited by their advisor. They may feel they will be damned if they write, and damned if they don’t write. Changing to a new advisor is theoretically possible as a way to resolve such a problem, but this option is fraught with difficulties, especially in the sciences where funding constraints and difficulties finding faculty knowledgeable in a specific area of research limit the possibilities.

When there is enough good will among all parties, a negotiated settlement is usually possible, sometimes with the help of a mediator or ombudsman to assist with the discussion. If something less ethically palatable is going on and negotiating is not possible, an advisor generally does have considerable authority to make final decisions about research and authorship, and there are many ways to be punitive to a student who mounts a challenge.

Next blog entry: What can a graduate student do to advocate for themselves in an authorship disagreement with an advisor?

Writing practice failure pays unexpected dividend

Several months ago I publicly pledged (in this blog) to write a hundred, 100-word stories in a year.  It was a well-intentioned attempt to insure regular writing and improve my writing skills. I’m ashamed, mortified and perversely proud to admit I only wrote 65 of them.

Be that as it may, I did have enough material to submit to a the Monterey Weekly’s 101 word story contest, and as luck would have it I was awarded second place for one of the stories and honorable mention for another (http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/2012/dec/27/unpredictably-genius/).

Not too shabby for a writing regimen failure.

For this achievement I was awarded a $50 gift certificate at a local brewery, which may not seem like a lot for a year’s worth of writing, but hey – if I could build up to winning six of these a day it would be a living. Sort of.

Bottom line – now I’m planning a small book project around some of these stories that will include illustrations. The moral of my story is: Just do it. You don’t know what will happen, but something will.

“The Words” – a story of a blocked writer telling a story about a plagiarized story.

The Words is a story in which Dennis Quaid, who lost his wife, gives a reading of his novel about a writer, Bradley Cooper, who finds and copies Jeremy Irons’ lost novel about losing his wife. Bradley then has enormous literary success from his copied novel but he feels tremendously guilty about this and then loses his wife. Although maybe Dennis Quaid’s novel is really a story in code about how he dealt with his own writing block through plagiarism and then lost his wife. The movie was written by Brian Klugman, and I hope he didn’t steal a screenplay about a writer who lost his wife and wrote about a writer who stole from another writer and lost his wife because, he might lose his wife like the rest of them.

I see why they entitled it The Words, because it takes a lot of them to summarize the plot. In any case the moral is clear: If you plagiarize, you lose  your wife (or your husband if that’s what you’ve got). Don’t let this happen to you, no matter how desperate you become at the keyboard. Maybe if you’re single it’s safer to try.

You’d think Bradley Cooper would have stuck to brain enhancing drugs, which was how he overcame his writing block in Limitless. In that movie he didn’t lose his wife either –  he wrote a book and got the girl.

The Words is a good portrait of the stresses a writer can endure, and of how tempting it can be to be to seek a quick and dirty path the success. In the end a writer has to live with himself, and his wife has to live with him too. And vice versa. A good movie to watch twice.

“The Life of Pi” is a tale of writing woes, and a hero with a tiger in his tank

A tiger tale inspires a blocked writer in “The Life of Pi”

In the movie The Life of Pi, adapted from Yann Martel’s novel of the same name, we have a story within a story about a struggling writer who is looking for a story. Martel inserts himself into the plot as a blocked writer who has abandoned a novel he can’t finish, and is searching for a tale to tell. He is led to a man named Pi who provides the amazing story he needs to get himself writing again.

Much of Pi’s story involves being alone in a lifeboat, trying to survive while negotiating a relationship with the tiger who shares his vessel. On some level, I wonder if this story is an allegory for the life of a writer. Pi struggles alone on a sea of uncertainty, as writers do, and he experiences inspiration, exhaustion, exhilaration and hopelessness during his voyage. He must find a way to coexist with the tiger in his boat, or all will fail, just as writers have to learn to deal with mysterious and powerful forces of their own nature in order to produce their work and share it with others.

It may be that the frequent appearance of the blocked writer in fiction and movies is explained by the fact that the writer’s life resembles  the “hero’s journey,” as described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Writers are heroes, whether they are acclaimed or not, by virtue of taking on this daunting, lonely challenge and having the courage, curiosity and fortitude to stay in the boat with their tiger until the destination is reached and the story is shared.

When enthusiastic feedback activates writer’s block

During a recent class I taught on overcoming writing blocks, a few students remarked that when they receive high praise for their work, they lock up. This seems counterintuitive, as one would think that positive input would put more gas in the engine. Often it does.

But a compliment can also be a double-edged sword for many writers. Praise can activate harsh perfectionism and/or low self-worth issues that shut down the writing factory. None of this is the speaker’s intent, but the writer’s self-sabotaging inner dialogue may get energized in an unfortunate way.

Some writers cannot assimilate compliments in  a useful way because they do not believe them, due to low self-esteem. Their discounting thought in reaction to praise is something like; “If someone likes what I write, they must be stupid or trying to make me feel good. Can’t they tell that I’m just an imposter?”

Positive feedback can also trigger ‘fear of success’ reactions like this; “If  I really have success, then I’ll be held to a standard of excellence that I’ll never be able to match again. Better to stop writing now before I’m set up for public humiliation.”

And there is always, “I don’t deserve success as a writer.”

Or how about this one; “If someone thinks my draft is pretty good, then I have to really perfect it so it’s magnificent”. In this case, the rewriting process is endless, and it kills the writer’s passion and the quality of what they had in the draft.

In all of these cases, the compliments or positive feedback backfire because the writer focuses too strongly on the self, the ego, the past, the future, or the public’s reaction. These issues are always in the mix, because we’re all human, but is there a way to limit their negative impact on productivity? I often recommend shifting attention away from questions about whether we are brilliant or pathetic, or whether the public adores or reviles us, and bringing the focus back to the project itself.

Many people who are plagued with chronic low self-esteem and serious self-doubts can and do produce the written word, and they often do a pretty good job of it. It’d be wonderful to go through life brimming with confidence every day, but you can’t wait for this if you want to write. When distracting praise reactions hijack your productivity, try shifting your attention back to the argument, the words, the story, the characters, the rhymes, etc., of the project in front of you.

And ask yourself, “What does my writing want or need? not “What does my ego, or someone else, want or need?”

Repeat as necessary.

The rumors of Morgan Freeman’s demise are exaggerated, but he is paralyzed in, “The Magic of Belle Isle”

Don’t worry…he’s not dead –  just blocked, grief-stricken, alcoholic, and paralyzed. And it’s only a movie

Sometimes dying is a great way to overcome writing blocks, and this appears to be true for the much admired actor Morgan Freeman, who was recently survived a widespread social media death hoax. Following his resurrection, he starred in The Magic of Belle Isle as a bitter, lonely, paralyzed, writer of westerns, who now finds solace in bourbon while his typewriter lies fallow on his desk.

Like many a writing block movie protagonist, Morgan was once the toast of the literary establishment, but he’s since lost his mojo, and now has only has 90 movie minutes to get it back. He is blocked by grief over his wife’s death (not his) and has been wordlessly languishing for six years.

This reminded me of the famous American poet Robinson Jeffers  who stopped writing and drank heavily for several years after his wife passed, then began writing again. In the Magic of Belle Isle, it’s Virginia Madsen, playing a single mother, and her three daughters  who eventually work the magic and resuscitate Morgan’s writing.

One strategy for kick starting your writing is to help another writer, and Morgan does this for one of the daughters who wants to learn about telling stories. His number two strategy is falling in love with a divorced mother of three, who is decades his junior, and this works pretty well too. Sadly, however, he moves away, but happily, he predictably returns and guess what; now he’s writing up a storm and getting together with Virginia.

This movie is pretty slow and very tame. You can follow it and write at the same time, and safely watch it before bed and have no trouble falling asleep. You might even fall asleep while watching it. In addition to a budding romance and a writing renaissance, the happy ending also includes Morgan swapping out his ancient typewriter for a shiny new Macbook.

Father and son blocked writers make peace, and a screenplay, and a movie within a movie about a blocked writer and his blocked father in “Florida Road”

Feuding Indian father-son blocked writers finally make peace, a screenplay, and a movie within a movie about a depressed, blocked writer and his angry, blocked, stroke-victim father in the South African movie, Florida Road. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell, except for the Bollywood dance sequence that closes out the film.

Can we believe the way this low-budget movie portrays writing blocks?  True or False:

1) A parent with a past that involves heart-breaking writing disappointments may have strong feelings about an offspring’s writing career. True

2) Unresolved interpersonal and familial conflicts can reduce or stop writing productivity, especially when the conflicts are about writing. True

3) After these conflicts are completely resolved during a stroke coma awakening hug, an award-winning screenplay will be burped out in a matter of minutes. False

4) Writers tend to be very poor dancers. True

Florida Road also includes extensive scooter-riding montages, an African slum kid subplot, a tepid romance, extensive Indian family dynamics, and a happy ending that shows you (spoiler alert) you’ve been watching a movie within a movie that has the exact same plot as the outer movie, but like, with different characters; or at least some of them anyway. I’m a little confused.

Florida Road is a first movie for screenwriter Fred Fontana, and his own struggles might have informed the plot.  While it’s not of Academy Award caliber, at least it adds some new cultural wrinkles to the writing block cinematic genre.