Writing Qualitatively, or the Demands of Writing

Have you ever said this or heard someone say this: "I have done all of my data analysis--I just have to write it down." Or, "I just have to write it up"? I will suggest that within the context of phenomenological inquiry, it is not necessarily helpful to try to assist researchers learning "how to write down" their reflections or "how to write up" their results. What should be more helpful is learning "how to write." Qualitative writing may be seen as an active struggle for understanding and recognition of the lived meanings of the lifeworld, and this writing also possesses passive and receptive rhetoric dimensions. It requires that we be attentive to other voices, to subtle significations in the way that things and others speak to us. In part, this is achieved through contact with the words of others. These words need to touch us, guide us, stir us.