Writing with phineas: How a fictional character from A. S. Byatt helped me turn my ethnographic data into research texts

Abstract

This article describes a collaborative writing strategy when you are alone. It is the story of how I came to bring Phineas, the protagonist in A. S. Byatt's The Biographer's Tale, into my writing process as a third voice in my dialogue with my data. It is a self-reflective text that shows how co-writers are always present, even when you might feel that you are writing all alone. In The Biographer's Tale, the academic Phineas renounces his post-structural dissertation project in literature to search for "things" and "facts." He decides to write a biography. However, Phineas discovers that "facts" are slippery and not easily "pieced together." Phineas writes about his struggles, and so do I. Through co-writing with Phineas, I gradually found a voice of experience, which helped me to transforming my ethnographic data into research texts. © 2014 SAGE Publications.