Writing as a Craft

Writing and the craft of writing has been heavy on my mind. It helps that I've been working on a project with one of my incredible doc students about the socialization of academic writing. While I have advice about writing in the "writing" category on this blog and also the "out-sourced" page of the site, here are some additional thoughts about my writing process and how I "hone" my craft. 

​READ. READ LOTS. READ OUTSIDE OF ACADEMIA. I remember hearing this and even I keep hearing this advice, I find myself rolling my eyes and saying "sure sure" while thinking to myself, "but I need to be writing." And in this, is an assumption of production. It's part of why I have loved Barbara W. Sarnecka's book The Writing Workshop: Write More, Write Better, Be Happier in Academia (which is FREE). Her opening metaphors in chapter 3 "The Practice of Writing" remains a quote I still share with students to this day. Here is an excerpt: 

Early drafts are not expected to be perfect; ideas take time to ripen and some projects take years to bear fruit. When production slows, the solution is not self-punishment but self-nurturing. When a tomato plant isn’t producing tomatoes, a gardener doesn’t say, “Shame on you for being unproductive! No more water for you until you produce a tomato!” Instead, the gardener looks for ways to enrich the soil and take care of the plant better. This is the most important implication of deciding to treat writing as gardening rather than mining—when you are unproductive, the solution is to treat yourself better, not worse. (Sarnecka, 2020, p.72)

And this idea of needing to produce is I think one of the key areas where I've had to relearn myself and my relationship with writing. Writing, at its core, is about the pause and finding the time and space to enjoy. And in doing so, we need to read and be inspired by work outside of academia, outside of our subject areas, to remember Writing this feels pithy in many ways given how much I struggle with writing, but I think that's also part of the point. So as you're reading, also enjoy the time to:

READ WHAT YOUR FAVES HAVE REFLECTED ON WRITING. So with that, there's not much more than just some nuggets of writing I enjoy reading, which include introspection as well as nods to particular writing techniques. The Barokka piece, along with the unapologetic ways Baldwin, Morrison, and Koh center identity, for me has affirmed the ways that humanizing writing-- both in process and product-- means being able to be challenge colonial (and arguably antiquated) conceptualizations of "good writing." But more on that to come... 

Writing advice from James Baldwin | I swear, this never gets old, and each of these sparks of wisdom is so precious when it comes to writing. ​​

Against Italicizing "Foreign" Words | YUM. My reaction isn't just a play on words given that author Khairani Barokka uses food to construct her argument. Instead, this reaction is based on a delicious point and once I will be using moving forward.

"You Don't Know Anything." And Other Writing Advice from Toni Morrison | This, along with "The Source of Self-Regard: Select Essays" are writing I treasure, not only for the advice itself but also the stylistic structure that I've since learned to explore as well. 

And for some more reading, here's a list of some of my favorite (non academic) essays as well as fictional short-stories in audio form! I'll end with another quote, this from E.J. Koh from her similarly constructed essay of Writing Advice for My Younger Self, in which she shares: 

Treat your words and your person kindly. They have traveled a vast distance over the span of human history to be with you. - E.J. Koh (2020)