The Handbook Of Academic Writing Rowena Murray And Sarah Moore

PREFACExia PhD you can’t be a legitimate academic’. ‘Unless you publish regularly in arange of identified journals, you won’t be promoted.’ ‘Unless you bring in somuch research funding to your department, you won’t be a valued member ofyour academic community.’ These are often seen as the realities of academiclife. Parts of academia may still offer a privileged existence, but increasinglyit comes with a price. And part of that price may be expressed as the pressureto write. Many talk about competition between colleagues that gives rise todysfunctionally cut-throat dynamics. Many lament that individualistic,non-collaborative behaviour is rewarded and endorsed when they feel thatuniversity life should be encouraging just the opposite. Positive writingenvironments can enhance the possibilities associated with sharing ideas,collaborating, teaching, research and learning. Like several commentatorsin academic environments, we think that it is time to reframe the nature ofacademic writing.For many, academic writing has become a thorn in the side of the academy,instead of the glue that holds everyone together. It can be argued that theemergence of the ‘new public management’ and the managerialist processeswith which corporate values have been implemented has prevented academicwriting from being a process through which learning and scholarship are nourished, and through which positive dialogue within and between disciplines isinitiated and sustained. We believe that it is still possible for academic writingto represent a route through which teaching, learning and research in universities can be more meaningfully united. We think that reconceiving writingin more positive, collaborative ways offers important solutions to many of theproblems that haunt contemporary university settings. From the perspectivesof individual academics and from those of organizational developers in universities, we propose that this book offers a set of implementable interventionsthat could help to give rise to the development and sustenance of healthierapproaches to writing.Influences from other fields of inquiryIn developing our ideas, we refer to a range of both established and emergingideas from various fields. We explore the fact that, separate from the externalrewards with which it may be associated, writing can be satisfying and pleasurable in its own right. We refer to concepts of ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)which define how sheer, unselfconscious delight can be associated withexceptional performance and the activity that is required to achieve it. Werefer to the idea that ‘transaction-oblivious’ orientations like those associatedwith natural play are those that can direct us towards the achievement ofhealthy and more meaningful patterns of academic writing. We show throughour own experiences and through the accounts of others (for example Grant

xiiPREFACEand Knowles, 2000), that writing can become a pleasurable activity, even foracademics who dread the process and initially feel a lack of confidence andcompetence when it comes to writing within their academic disciplines.We also believe that many popular ideas such as emotional intelligence(Goleman, 1995), stress management, self-esteem, career development, andthe principles of mentoring, networking and coaching can all be incorporatedmore successfully into both individual and group strategies for developingacademic writing. In this book, we will describe a range of interventionsthrough which this can be achieved.An overviewIn Part I, we present a contextualized analysis of academic writing in universityand other third-level settings.Chapter 1 sets the scene by defining and exploring important aspects ofacademic writing. We explore the iterative nature of writing, which we arguecharacterizes all writing, and we unravel some of the paradoxes that are aninevitable part of the process. By analysing writing paradoxes, we present amatrix for the development of writing strategies that can form a useful framework for building positive approaches to writing while avoiding unhelpfulroutines and habits. Chapter 2 focuses on initiating creative, energized andconfident approaches to academic writing. The act of ‘advancing’, or steppingforward, is defined as a phase in which ideas are plentiful and when a largerange of possibilities and alternatives lies in front of the writer. This orientationrequires preparation and planning, and you will be introduced to techniquesto generate and free up your thought processes. You will be encouraged toexplore the positive dimensions of the ‘creative phase’ as well as to understandthat this phase can also be associated with problems such as those associatedwith disorganization, chaos and information overload. Chapter 2 ends with aseries of practical ideas about how writers can get ready to step forward in theiracademic writing processes.In Chapter 3 we discuss why retreating, or stepping back and regroupingafter sustained advances in writing, is an essential part of the process. In thatchapter, we also provide an analysis of what retreating from your writingrequires. Retreating may be initiated by your own independent discoveries oras a result of critical insights from someone else. Chapter 3 also presents astructured strategy for developing healthy attitudes and responses to criticism.You will be encouraged to explore how to make the most of stepping back fromyour writing by understanding the positive and negative experiences associated with this phase, and by developing effective methods of re-evaluatingyour writing. Chapter 4 explores the importance of understanding your ownparticular academic discipline when you are targeting the places in which you

PREFACExiiihope to have your work published. It identifies common and distinctive features of scholarship and proposes specific ways in which these features can beincorporated into your academic writing.Part II provides details of three innovative approaches to developing academic writing in third-level settings. Chapter 5 describes the conceptual andpractical considerations associated with running university-based ‘writers’retreats’; Chapter 6 provides details of a structured ‘writing for publicationprogramme’; while Chapter 7 explores the parameters associated with theestablishment of writers’ groups to enhance and develop effective academicwriting. Chapter 8 explores the insights gained from these institutionalinnovations in order to redefine and reconceptualize writing practices inacademia, with particular reference to the importance of community-based,collaborative learning both for faculty and students.Part III focuses on how you can renegotiate your academic life in very practical ways, ensuring that writing occupies a central part of your professionallife, linking positively with a whole range of other important activities. Weshow that by becoming a more productive writer, you can enhance your rolesas a teacher and a scholar. We suggest that in order to proceed with youracademic writing, it is useful to engage in a series of negotiations that recognize not just your responsibilities, but also your rights within your own uniquenetwork of professional and private support. The final chapter of this bookpulls together the strands and themes that have been explored to presentpractical models of academic writing that can act as guides to help you to putacademic writing in context and manage its peaks and troughs effectively.Some of the ideas we present in this book are simple and self-evident. Somewill provide you with strategies that you have never thought of before, butwhich we hope you can easily and rapidly adopt to help to develop yourwriting. More simply, though, all of them encourage you to enjoy the journey.They urge you to stop always looking at your watch and to avoid the constanttemptation to measure the distance between your current position and yourultimate destination. The more you focus on the journey and its intricaciesand sights, the faster and more exciting the journey will feel.If you struggle with academic writing, or associate it with at least some badexperiences, we hope that this book will help you to reframe the aspects of theacademic writing process that you find difficult. If you have already gained agood command of your academic writing, we hope that some of the reflectionsin this book will help to generate even more comfortable writing routines andto enhance your approach further. If you are interested in helping others todevelop their academic writing, then this book will also provide some insightsfor you to consider. Throughout this book, we encourage academic writers,educational developers and teachers of academic writing, to considerideas, rhythms and routines that they may not have previously considered inthis way or this deliberately. Importantly, if you approach writing as a linear,step-by-step process and you can’t bear the thought of ‘going back’ to revisitand to re-evaluate your writing, then we hope that this book will offer some

xivPREFACEworkable alternatives that will feed and develop your approach as a writer.We hope that the reflections, strategies, guidance and advice that this bookcontains will help to make your academic writing effective, pleasurable andsatisfying – characteristics that should be central to the experience of academiclife.

Part IIn getting to grips with the process of academic writing, a useful starting pointis to explore its nature, phases and characteristics. If we know more about thecomplexities of the process, it may be that we can come to terms with thechallenges of the content. These first four chapters have been written in orderto engage in a deeper analysis of writing paradoxes, writing time slots, writingprogression and writing regression. Getting used to the idea that writing

Academic writing is often a highly problematic but always potentially trans-formational activity. Despite the great diversity within and between different academic disciplines, several common themes are associated with the experi-ence of writing in academia. It is often encountered as a process that is full of paradoxes. This book aims to identify and explore those common themes and to help .