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Abstract
This article is a narrative account of my experiences as an emerging writer engaged in the process of writing an article for submission to an academic journal. As a novice academic writer, I was supported by my doctoral supervisor and another senior lecturer who has published several articles. I draw on this first experience of writing an article to disseminate findings of research done at undergraduate level as material for this article. The reflective journal written when I was an undergraduate student, the drafts of the article, as well as my supervisor's comments were used as data, which I analysed. Mezirow's (1991) transformative learning theory with the categories of challenges, learning, and emotions was used as a theoretical lens for analysis. The findings point to the process of scholarly writing, the challenges that I faced, the academic learning I experienced, as well as the emotional development on my journey towards becoming a scholarly writer. I conclude that deep reflection on the process and the action of writing enhanced my own development as scholar. This has implications for other novice writers who are forging their way in academia.
Keywords: Academic writing, narrative, reflection, Mezirow
Introduction
How does a novice academic writer learn to write a scholarly article? This is a question confronting many emerging scholars who want to establish themselves as academics. I am a teacher, a novice writer, and an emerging researcher who wants to immerse myself in research and publication and in so doing establish myself in academia. As a third-year undergraduate student teacher several years ago, I conducted research on teenage pregnancy as part of a research and service learning module in the Faculty of Education,7 University of KwaZulu-Natal. In this module, we were expected to research the service learning projects that we conducted in various communities. I was engaged in a service learning project with pregnant teenage schoolchildren at a rural high school. I thought the project warranted writing an article to disseminate the findings. It was during this process, as well, that I was exploring what is expected when writing a research article. Because the article writing process was new to me, I made notes reflecting on my experiences of writing the article. These reflections provided the impetus for...