Patter has been missing in action since the end of August. A bad case of blogging burn-out you might ask? Well, yes that’s true. I have been writing this patter thing for twelve years and I did have some doubts about whether I had anything left to say. I was finding writing the blog much more of a chore than I wanted. It had ceased to be enjoyable. And it was something of a relief to just stop and not worry about what I was going to write next. However. I’m back. And it’s not that it’s a new year. Although that is a convenient coincidence.
The thing is that there was something else going on besides long-time blogging. And it was to do with the sh**tshow that was academic social media and the rise and rise of people offering writing advice. Bad writing advice. Writing advice that sounded like it might be useful but was lacking in explanation and/or in any kind of nuance. The more I saw infographics and posts which reduced quite complicated writing questions to simple but rigid steps, and the more I saw people talking about writing ‘rules’, ‘tips’ ‘formulae’ and ‘templates’, the less I wanted to be part of any group that wrote about academic writing . So I just quietly withdrew while I tried to work out what I could, and should do.
A lot of the bad academic writing advice I was and am concerned about is associated with selling workshops and resources (more infographics and templates). Some of it also seems to be a lot about ego. Not much of this stuff ever refers to the research on academic writing or any of the serious scholarly work done about academic publication.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against selling per se and you can still get invaluable support online. And there are some really helpful writing workshops and coaching services available. But you do have to sort out which is the good stuff and which isn’t, who are the ethical people and who aren’t. For starters, beware of anything that offers one-best ‘rules’, ‘tips’ ‘formulae’ and ‘templates’ and doesn’t seem focused on developing your practice and understandings. Check out people’s CVs and if they don’t seem to have much, then be suspicious – take whatever might be offered as a free taster and check it out. And the old adage applies here – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
However, it’s the marketing of really crappy writing stuff that I just can’t abide. It makes me particularly crabby because those who are selling poor advice prey on people who can’t rely on institutional support and/or people who don’t feel particularly confident about writing. There was and is a lot of this nasty stuff on the former bird platform which I and many others have now left. Those without institutional support deserve better than false promises and cheap tricks.
In order to re-orient myself to academic writing I’ve had to revisit the reasons I first started writing the blog. The blog came a good decade after I’d started working on academic writing. My very first conference presentation about academic writing was in 2000, with my good friend Barbara Kamler. The presentation was premised on the notion that most of the academic writing we read adheres to conventions, not hard and fast rules. We said then that conventions can be changed and some of them really ought to be. Nevertheless, it is helpful to understand the conventions. But while there are lots of useful exercises that you can do to orient yourself to these writing conventions, they can also be a trap. Rigidly following writing conventions generally leads to dull and dead prose. Trying to sound clever simply by following a few pre-determined steps doesn’t really produce good work. Barbara and I were, and are, adamant that sitting down to read paper after paper all written in exactly the same way is a dank and dismal scholarly groundhog day.
This is what I am about. Then and now. Understanding the conventions and also trying to bend them. Above all, writing in ways that are engaging. as well as persuasive and well-evidenced. I’m also still interested in providing strategies and resources that people can adapt and use as they see fit. So with this mind, I’m coming back to the blog with some renewed focus.
I’m giving the blog a little facelift and you’ll see some further small changes over the next few weeks. And I’ve got a little list of things to write about for the foreseeable. Starting next week, I’m going back to talking about writing from your PhD. I hope you will find something useful in what’s on offer in 2025.