A recent post on the Doctoral Writing SIG blog addresses the idea of writing aversion. In this post, Susan Carter discusses her work with an academic who has an actual phobia of writing. Most of us don’t have such a dramatic disinclination towards writing, but it’s still rare to find much in the way of real enthusiasm. And this general lack of enthusiasm poses an interesting teaching challenge. What is the best tone to take when discussing an activity that has such high stakes and that poses so many emotional and intellectual challenges? Obviously, an important and difficult task like writing isn’t best met with mindless positivity. But reflexive negativity can have costs, too.
If I focus on that half-full glass, I know that I run the risk of annoying graduate student writers by potentially minimizing a genuine struggle. The last thing most graduate student writers need to hear is how super fun writing can be. Indeed, telling the truth about the difficulties inherent in academic writing is essential. Students will often tell me at the end of a course that they hadn’t previously realized that others were struggling as much as they were; they clearly value the opportunity to get away from their usual disciplinary spaces to a place where the real challenges of academic communication can be discussed honestly. Even if I accomplish nothing else as a writing teacher, letting novice writers know that everyone struggles with writing is worthwhile.
While I’m in favour of this sort of honesty about the writing process, I have no wish to contribute to a dismissive attitude. If you can’t talk about a love of writing in a writing classroom, where can you? In part, I’m looking to disrupt any narrative that equates unhappiness with profundity. Loving to write does not preclude taking it seriously or doing it well; writing needn’t necessarily involve opening a vein. The writing classroom should be a place where enjoyment of the writing process gets discussed. It should also be a place where the centrality of writing to the academic endeavour is acknowledged. Not everyone needs to love writing, but everyone who is heading down a career path based on writing needs to make their peace with it.
There is a natural middle path here: the pleasures of the writing process and its challenges are two sides to the same coin. To talk about the pleasure is not to deny the pain. But for those who are sure that writing is just a necessary evil, any discussion of enjoyment can seem naive. I recognize, of course, that academic writing is not an engine that will run on love alone. The hard work of writing needs to go on with or without inspiration, but that doesn’t mean we can’t approach it as a crucial professional commitment that must be something more than just an unfortunate obstacle. I’d love to hear how others talk about the writing process in a way that respects the inevitable frustrations without giving in to a narrative of negativity.
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Recent links from @explorstyle on Twitter
From @ThomsonPat, using your allotted word count well in order to meet the needs of your reader.
From @DocwritingSIG, developing good habits of academic writing early in graduate study.
From Inside Higher Ed, thoughts on automated grading of student writing.
From Lingua Franca, Geoffrey Pullum explains his distrust of Orwell on the topic of clear writing.
From @StanCarey writing in @MacDictionary blog, a great post on ‘whom’: where it will fade and where it will persist.
From Inside Higher Ed, advice on making writing instruction part of all undergraduate instruction: Teaching Writing Is Your Job.
From @ProfHacker, a set of questions to help us be more mindful in our pursuit of productivity.
From @ThomsonPat, a discussion of the politics of characterizing the practical impact of your scholarly work.
From Lingua Franca, a great look at an editorial prejudice: can you have an ‘on the other hand’ without an ‘on the one hand’?
From @scholarlykitchn, a consideration of the new relationship between Elsevier and Mendeley.
From @cplong, an interesting post on using Twitter for collaborative note taking during presentations.
While I don’t entirely agree with this take on academic writing, the reminder about the author’s role in constructing meaning is apt.
From @OnlinePhDProgs, a great list of thesis and dissertation resources.
I think this is an interesting idea: Taking a Class I Usually Teach.
From @UVenus, the relationship between inspiration and distraction.
From @evalantsoght in @GradHacker, good advice on working with an unmanageable amount of scholarly literature.
From Henry Hitchings in the New York Times, a nuanced take on nominalizations: what they are and why we use them.
From @AltAcademix, advice on what to do if you are “alt-ac curious” during graduate school.
Explorations of Style 
It’s helpful for me to know that other people share the emotional and intellectual challenges inherent in academic writing. I somewhat resent the rhetoric that these obstacles are best overcome by chopping the writing task into manageable bits of time and rushing to a deadline (as much as I respond positively to this strategy).
I place my half-written, partially edited, and half-baked peices of academic writing in a dedicated drawer in my home office. I keep them like old love letters that I can’t bear to throw away. Inevitably, in my procrastination, I stumble across them and they bring me back to write some more…
Thanks, Sean. I agree that productivity strategies have to be seen within a broader context. Sometimes these strategies have the power to get us over obstacles and into a more consistent and creative space. But other times, the notion of productivity can oversimplify the tasks of academic writing, making it seem like just a matter of organization and individual will-power.
When I talk to graduate students about writing, I try to emphasize writing in order to think. We talk about genre, guidelines, strategies, but I also remind them that it’s a way to think through our ideas. It doesn’t always have to be perfect.
Thanks for commenting, Liana! I think this is a great point, and one that I neglected in the post itself. The way that writing functions as a form of thinking is an important reason why writing can be enjoyable: getting that clarity about our own ideas can be hugely satisfying.