Broadening our writing and mentoring BASE

A tool and facilitation method for talking productively about writing habits

Apr 21, 2026

∙ Paid

Image of two gray, translucent quadrilaterals (somewhat diamond shaped) overlayed on a grid of concentric diamond "rings." There are four lettered labels, one on each point of the gray diamonds. They are a yellow A, for artisanal habits; a blue B for behavioral habits, a purple S for social habits, and a green E for emotional habits. The lefthand diamond is labeled "My own BASE" and reflects a retired professor's self-assessment of their own writing habits now. roughly half the size of the underlying concentric rings, indicating average habits for B, S, and E. The A dimension is stretched nearly to the far edge, indicating more advanced A habits. The righthand shape is labeled "My student's BASE" and reflects a graduate student early in their career in this specific professor's research lab. This shape is much smaller and skewed, not even a diamond. The A dimension is about half-way stretched out, as is the S dimension. The B and E dimensions, however, are quite close to the center of the grid, indicating those dimensions are poor/under-developed. — Figure 1. For some comparative fun, see here my co-author Steve’s base, alongside his estimate of a typical grad student in his lab. Read on for my BASE and estimates of students I actually work with at my own institution.

One thing that sometimes surprises folks as they learn to write, and even more as they learn to mentor writers, is that the technical part of writing is only one piece of the challenge – and for many writers, not the largest one. There are also behavioral, emotional, and social aspects to writing, and challenges arise from each. Most writing guides pay relatively little attention to those, likely because the technical aspects of writing – structure, vocabulary, style, genre conventions, and the like – are more straightforward to address. But technical proficiency isn’t the only thing writers need, or the only thing our writing mentees need to be helped with.

This multi-dimensionality of writing challenges is something Helen Sword has written about extensively (most ob…

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