Category Archives: Creative writing

Being Vulnerable in Writing

Academic Writing, Creative writing, Graduate student writers, Inspiration and motivation, Make writing social

We live in a world, that, to put it mildly, is less than kind at times. As the days go by, we may well feel poked, prodded, or just, simply, wronged. I’m sure we can all relate, I mean it’s hard to go through a year, let alone a day, without something being irksome. With all these pains, worries and injustices, who wants to open themselves to others, to be vulnerable; it may be the last thing on your list of things to do. Yet, we know great things can come from being vulnerable—think of the journeys we make to foreign places, the personal conversations we find ourselves in, or, simply, the unexpected events that life throws to us; it’s not all bad. In fact, how would we grow as people, as individuals, as a community, without being vulnerable to something, someone, or the world at large (or, without some other thing being vulnerable to us?).

Vulnerable Life

In our world, being vulnerable is not only part of daily life, but also part of the practice of being a writer. Being vulnerable in life is as vital as it is in being able to write well; why then do we worry about opening up, about sharing our deepest thoughts and feelings when we witness not only the pain such experiences bring, but also the positivity. You are vulnerable, I am vulnerable, together it is inescapable.

Ours, however, is a society where vulnerability is wedded to a certain weakness. Gender stereotypes and general prejudice abound when considering the baggage that comes with being vulnerable. We don’t know our teacher but we know that, if you want success, or to be a leader, you have to toughen up and close the world off: just be ‘you’, a promethean character, we are told. This “fear of vulnerability” is a pathology, not just for us as social beings, but as writers; seriously, who likes writing that is closed to the world? Who is moved by writing that is ironclad, fortress-like, cold and closed?

Being Vulnerable and Using vulnerability

To feel the connection between vulnerability and authenticity is not novel, nor is noticing the power vulnerability has to move people and change yourself. What makes for moving stories, for moving writing, is vulnerability to your audience. Turning towards the need to be vulnerable in writing isn’t simply about being personal; it is about being open to the world as a wider life practice. While, usually, being vulnerable means we have to be ‘deep’, it doesn’t have to be; maybe being vulnerable happens in small ways, with small steps rather than deep plunges. It is time to embody the vulnerability that makes your writing alive to the world and all that happens in it. We must start by asking ourselves, which writing is not vulnerable to us, as readers?

Critically, vulnerability isn’t just a useful rhetoric practice, a deployment of pathos: it is but a part of living. Here, Brené Brown, distinguishes ‘using’ vulnerability and ‘being’ vulnerable; as Jane Harkness says “there is a stark difference”. The point for us, the laypeople, is that being vulnerable in and with our writing is about opening a space for dialogue, a space where we can write, think and be together, where we can grow, and, as Haraway says, “stay with the trouble”.

Being Vulnerable with Others

But how can we learn to be vulnerable in and with our writing? Here are some steps we can take:

  • Be honest and trusting (we aren’t escaping being vulnerable to the world any time soon, trust that others are there for you)
  • Do writing exercises (small essays, little scribbles, anything that isn’t too serious) – share it with others; de-escalate the fear you have of the experience
  • Visit writing centres, us included (engaging with professionals may help depersonalise the whole experience)

We are not immune to being vulnerable, we need vulnerability for our writing to be itself, even if we are not of a literary mindset. We need vulnerability to be willing to change ourselves, and our writing; we need vulnerability to be willing to listen to the comments, thoughts, and criticisms others have of what we say. So, whoever you are, remember that good writing isn’t closed and invulnerable; it is there to be open, ready to reveal itself to world. I’m ready to be open to the world, are you?

About the Author:

Luke Lavender

Hey, I’m Luke, a masters student in Political Science with a Concentration in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at the University of Victoria; I am working to work out what I am actually working on. I completed my undergraduate in the UK with a year abroad of study in Munich, Germany. Now, I find myself acting as the Teaching Assistant Consultant for Political Science, an International Teaching Consultant, and as a Graduate Student Tutor at the Centre for Academic Communication.

Coming Out of the Cave: Playing with Reflexive Writing

Academic Writing, Creative writing, Graduate student writers, Inspiration and motivation, Make writing social, Voice, Writers writing about writing

By Luke Lavender

“How MUCH my life has changed, and yet how unchanged it has remained at

bottom!” – Kafka, Investigations of a Dog

Clack go the keys; your mouse moves across the screen, in a lazy manner, hovering over the text you have managed to write and pour out. Your brain is weary, your eyes are adjusting—right, let’s see what we have managed to put into the world. Oh, no, what I am I saying here, how does Trump relate to this, am I really claiming THAT!? Wait, is that it? How did I get here, what was I saying, where was my writing going—is there no going back, I want to find what I was meaning to say before I lose myself in this cave.

Lost, lost, lost; our writing is screaming to say something, but it’s lost, I am lost in my writing. These feelings abound, as an undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, as someone who simply is trying to speak to others. I’m sure we’ve all been here before, in that dark cave where what you are saying does not connect to what you mean, where you, your words and speech, are not in dialogue with your thinking, your intention—how does it happen, does it always have to be this way, can I not be myself in my writing?

It is not uncommon that we are told to avoid you, the subject of you, the subject of personal subjects in writing.  As we ‘refine’ what we say, we find it common to try and escape ourselves in that process; we are told to write an argument, but make sure it is the argument that speaks, that you are not yourself in your text. In fact, in a certain way, is our writing not writing about avoiding that subject, the subject that we are? Sometimes, these lessons are personal and conscious—feedback asking us to not be so personal, to distance the writing from ourselves, to make sure that the writing speaks for itself—sadly, it is also an unconscious process; for many of us, writing operates through what Butler calls, in Excitable Speech, a “logic of censorship” that makes speaking, writing and dialogue, possible. Paradoxically, we are told to censor and write without ourselves, but why?

Formally the reasons abound, the father of them, is objectivity; “Academic writing should be objective… the language of academic writing should therefore be impersonal, and should not include personal pronouns, emotional language or informal speech”. For many this is all well and good, by eliminating use of the ‘I’ or yourself in the writing, we can escape bias, the tainted world of experience, and actually come into knowledge, true knowledge, knowledge that exists irrespective of a subject, a ‘you’, who does the thinking. Allegedly this leads to greater clarity, clearer reasoning, and more transparent writing; but does it? Is this all it does?

It seems sensible that objectivity removes us from what we say, so sensible that we miss the wider circle we find ourselves in: being objective requires being opaque to yourself in the writing, to not be reflective about what you think, let alone what you write. In this circle, we lose a grasp of the edges of our writing, it turns from being a cave into becoming a tomb; the writing becomes dark, you can’t find your way around it, let alone, get out of it—we find ourselves trapped into writing objectively and destined to find ourselves as mummified within hieroglyphics that we can’t even decipher. What a sad fate for objective knowledge, for objective writing, for an objective author; is this truly our destiny, can I not, myself, start understanding what I want to say? How, in a word, do we come to know the edges of ourselves, our writing, and what we are saying through writing itself? Should writing not be the means by which we not only illuminate our minds, but, fundamentally, learn about the thoughts that we have? Should writing not be about becoming aware of the thoughts we have and how to express them?

What could be a more perfect recipe for getting lost than the reflex to not be you in your writing, to write without yourself in the process? This is a concern that dogs the philosopher Raymond Geuss in the book “Philosophy and Real Politics”; the tendency of our philosophy, thinking, and, ultimately, writing is to lead us away from ourselves, to shut the doors on thinking about how your writing speaks to others, but also, reflects yourself. No wonder then, that, Mihaela Mihai calls for “responsible” and “responsive” theorising, a practice of being responsive to the realities of the world, and yourself in that world. Can we not take a stand and ask for a turn towards responsible and responsive writing? And what would it entail? A writing that, in its very existence, is reflexive, knows the edges of what it says, what it thinks, and what it thinks it says in contrast to what it actually says; a writing that is not entombed in objectivity, but open to itself. It is about making writing an exercise in reflection.

Are we not lost souls because we think our writing is transparent when it is actually opaque? Are we not in this cave because the way we are taught to write, academically, leads us away from being reflexive with what we say, and from knowing the limits of writing, from ourselves, on the page? So, as we turn to outside help, to others to help us say what we think and be transparent, perhaps we can try and recognise the vitality of being responsible and responsive as we write; in other words, of writing reflexively. This may happen in small steps, but perhaps we can collectively practice this lost language of ourselves in writing: journal, explore, and, above all, write about ourselves. We must play with our writing; so play, like I am in this very post, in this very writing. It doesn’t have to be objective, but it has to talk about you—give it a go with me, maybe we can find get out of the cave and find our paths together?

This first step—of turning writing into a reflexive exercise about reflecting on yourself, your thoughts, your limits—is exactly what we need if we want to know who we are and what we are saying when we put pen to paper, finger to key, and expose our writing-self to the world. So, let us not avoid the subject within writing, let us reflect on how to write reflexively. I for one, am tired of being lost in my own work.

About the Author:
Luke Lavender

Hey, I’m Luke, a masters student in Political Science with a Concentration in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at the University of Victoria; I am working to work out what I am actually working on. I completed my undergraduate in the UK with a year abroad of study in Munich, Germany. Now, I find myself acting as the Teaching Assistant Consultant for Political Science, an International Teaching Consultant, and as a Graduate Student Tutor at the Centre for Academic Communication.

A beam of light, a mirror, or an axe: Writing as self-discovery

Cognition and writing, Cognitive process and writing, Creative writing, Dissertation writing, Inspiration and motivation, Motivation, Posts by Emily, Reading, Writers writing about writing, Writing resources

By Emily Arvay

Image credit: North News & Pictures Ltd. Creative Commons Licence.

“The well of inspiration is a hole that leads downwards” (Atwood, 176).

Margaret Atwood and Hélène Cixous suggest that all writing is motivated by a compulsion to explore the deepest parts of ourselves. Both authors argue that writing serves to illuminate “an underworld” to draw unacknowledged or unexamined insights back into the light (Atwood, xxiv). Whereas Cixous compares writing to plunging deep into the earth or ocean (5), Atwood compares writing to entering a dark labyrinth or cave with no opening:

“Obstruction, obscurity, emptiness, disorientation, often combined with a struggle or path or journey – an inability to see one’s way forward but a feeling that there [is] a way forward, and that the act of going forward eventually [brings] about the conditions for vision.” (xxii-xxiii)

For Atwood, writing is midwifed in darkness through which inspiration appears as a flash of light (176). Simply put, writers who enter this underworld serve to illuminate that which is already present but unseen.

For Atwood and Cixous, the process of reading shares many of the same properties as writing: a reader enters a text from a place of darkness, unsure of where that text may take them, and temporarily loses then regains their sense of self in the process. As Cixous describes, to be a reader is “to lose a world and to discover that there is more than one world, and that the world isn’t what we think” (10). Ultimately, both authors acknowledge that writing-as-self-discovery is not an easy process – that any attempt to write with integrity is “an exercise that requires us to be stronger than ourselves” (Cixous, 42). It is perhaps for this reason that Kafka once compared writing to “an axe” to break “the frozen sea inside us” (as cited in Cixous, 17). Whether understood as a beam of light, a mirror, or an axe, Atwood, Cixous, and Kafka teach us that the process of writing, however imperfect, may gift the writer with the means to ascend towards a more luminous, expansive, or magnanimous awareness of self.

Works Referenced

Atwood, Margaret. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Cixous, Hélène. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

About the author:

Emily Arvay completed her PhD at the University of Victoria in 2019 with her thesis “Climate Change, the Ruined Island, and British Metamodernism.”  Since then, she has worked as a Learning Strategist and EAL Specialist at the University of Victoria. She is currently conducting further research on the intersections between literary metamodernism and contemporary climate fictions.

 

 

 

Jacquie plays: The literature review as a journey up the mountain

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Creative writing, Kinesiology, Literature review, Reading, Research, Structure, Tutoring, Writing process

By Jacqueline Allan and Madeline Walker

Jacqueline Allan, a masters’ student in kinesiology with a background in recreation, started visiting the Centre for Academic Communication early in her program. When Jacquie , who is studying adult play, shared her novel approach to the literature review with us recently, I just had to see if she was willing to let the community experience it as well.  Click onto the sound file to hear Jacquie’s journey up the mountain.

Earlier in the semester, Jacquie and I had a conversation about her life and her work.

Madeline: “Thank you for providing your literature review recording for us to enjoy. Can you tell me a little about why you wanted to study adult play for your master’s thesis?”

Jacquie : “I teach a lot of fitness classes, and I noticed that when I present something that’s playful, there are people who really resist that. They think, ‘I’m here to get a good hard workout, let’s just stay with what we know about exercising. Let’s not do anything playful.’ In fact, I’ve had people leave the class. So, I’m interested in what happens when we want to become playful. Or, why don’t we become playful?”

Madeline: “I love your question, ‘why are people resistant to play?’ I can relate as I used to be one of those people. Part of it was self-consciousness. What would people think? We’re not children anymore, I can’t look foolish. That was part of my resistance.”

Jacquie: “I think that’s a lot of it. People say I was a kid then, and I’ve left all that behind. Why is that? What are the forces acting on us as adults that don’t allow that? Is it still the work ethic thing, that if I am not working, I’m not seen as being productive? So it doesn’t have value? I am interested in that.”

Madeline: “When I first heard your lit review, you were on a hike, and there was birdsong in the background—you were embodying this spirit of play in your work, which I think is so wonderful.  I wanted to know what was the spark to give you this idea?  Was it, ‘I want to do a lit review and I want to record it, to make it a story?’”

Jacqueline made a wry face. “You just said I wanted to do a lit review; I HAD to do a lit review!” We both laughed about that.

Jacquie then described a childhood memory that informed her literature review journey: “I thought back to when I was a kid. I grew up on the North Shore of Vancouver, and we lived at the bottom of Grouse Mountain, and that was one of the things I did with my cousins, who lived in the same neighbourhood. We used to go down to the creek at the bottom of the mountain, and we would start going up the mountain, looking for Santa Claus. That was the culture we grew up in. It occurred to me that we didn’t really know where we were going. We knew that we were having fun, and this lit review is a journey for me into the unknown, into the wilderness.”

Madeline: “So that’s where you got the model for the journey up the mountain? “

Jacquie: “Yes. So I took all the people I was looking at in my research, and I could envisage them being at certain places along the way. One person that comes to mind is Brian Sutton-Smith [play theorist from New Zealand, 1924-2015]. I read his material for the literature review, and at one point I thought—wait a minute—I’ve met this person before! There was a prof who came to UBC and gave us a lecture for a convention or something, and I walked back with him and we were laughing and he looked like a surfer, and he had an accent. He reminded me of somebody who embodied playfulness! I could see him in the forest. He was with all the elves, just running around in this grove. So he takes a big part in this because he, for me, having met him, was playful even in his work. . . . And toward the end of the lit review, I came to the realization that I didn’t know anything!

I responded, “That means you’re very wise, Jacquie, when you know you don’t know anything!”

We chuckled about that nugget of truth voiced by Albert Einstein: “the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”

Jacquie: “Brian Sutton-Smith said that play is ambiguous–even Aristotle and Plato said that. We don’t really know what it is. Play is a noun and a verb in our culture. In particular, what is play for adults? As adults, we tend to know when we are not at play. To me, that means we know what play is. If you know the shadow of it, then you know what it is. But at the same time realizing this is so huge and I thought I would get to this literature review, and this would be the basis of a thesis I wanted to do, and I would think, ‘great, I’ve done it.’ Oh my gosh, no, not even close!”

The Wisdom of Ravens

Reflecting on her feeling of not knowing, Jacquie starts to describe her experience with ravens.

“I have met ravens on Grouse Mountain. One day, I was up there at the chalet where you can sit and look over the city. A raven came down and sat right there looking at me. This was the raven I had in my head. Speaking of wise–they’re so very wise.  The raven looked at me:

‘You think you know what’s going on but you don’t have a clue! And furthermore this path is way longer and way more ancient than you ever thought.’

I know now that ravens in First Nations culture symbolize an awful lot, but one of the things is knowledge. I thought, well that’s interesting. The raven is holding all this knowledge, and it’s up to me to try to find out, but the raven had no intention of telling me any of the knowledge except to say, it will be revealed to you.  First, you need to put in the work. So I’m at the bottom of the Grouse Grind, not at the top, and I need to keep going. That was the message from the raven.”

Jacquie thought for a bit then added, “Ravens also symbolize the subtlety of the truth. Am I looking for the truth of play?  Will ever approach the truth? Or get close?”

Wondering with Jacquie, I offered the following thought: “Maybe there are multiple truths.”

Jacquie: “Good point. Ravens also symbolize the unknown. In fact, I wrestle with and have to get comfortable with and accept that I’ll never know the truth about play.”

I remembered what a favourite writer of mine said about the literature review. “Pat Thomson says that the literature review is about getting comfortable with ambiguity, with not knowing. You’ll never know it all. I love your attitude, of seeing it as a journey of revelation. Even if you only get a little bit of it, there’s still a sense of appreciation. Sometimes we get arrogant as academics, thinking we can capture all this information, but in fact it’s always changing and dynamic, and it’s impossible to know it all.”

Jacquie admitted that this was a surprise to her.

“Jacquie,” I said, “I know you are an accomplished jazz vocalist. Is that what you do for play?”

Jacquie: “It is playful, but within a massive structure. So knowing the structure is super important, and improvisation is all part of jazz. So that becomes the playful part but within this really tremendous structure. So for me personally, playfulness is an attitude. I have a strong feeling that all of creation is playful, and the fact that we as humans don’t get that is kind of our problem. And so I look for that, every single day, and I look for the people–you  recognize somebody who has a playful spirit. Most day to day situations can be turned into playful situations. But that makes going through it fun; why not have fun? We’re all in it together. To do what we do individually to the best of our abilities. Let’s just have fun together. It’s very social for me as well. I can be playful by myself, you know I like physical recreation, but being playful with other people is where it’s at.”

Madeline: “So playfulness is an attitude for you?”

Jacquie clarified: “It’s actually a behaviour trait. Most of the researchers would distinguish play as one thing, but playfulness is something different. One researcher, Gordon, says her feeling is that playfulness can be learned or re-learned as an adult, and that fascinates me. What are the conditions under which a person learns for the first time or relearns how to be playful in their life?”

Jacquie and I agreed this seemed hopeful—that adults can re-learn their playfulness.

Jacquie’s top three tips for writing a literature review

I asked Jacquie to share her top three tips for a student who says, “I have to do a lit review and I’m terrified! What should I do?”

Jacquie responded without missing a beat: “Seek help at the Centre for Academic Communication. Those people know what a literature review is, and they can give you information on how to approach it right from the very beginning. They can give you tons of resources. That was so important to me. It was vital to me, not having done one before.”

Madeline: “Thanks for the plug, Jacquie!”

Jacquie : “Second, be looking at a topic you absolutely love because it can be onerous, and reading research is a bit of a process, so just stay with your loved topic. The third one is to have fun with it because it is a journey. In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck says ‘you don’t take a journey, the journey takes you.’ So recognize that right off the top.”

Jacquie  started to gather her things to go. Time had slipped by quickly because we had been playing. “Thank you for the opportunity and the assistance you’ve given me.”

Thank you, Jacquie , for sharing your journey through this interview and your recorded literature review. Many readers will feel inspired to welcome playfulness into their lives after they read this. I know you inspired me!

 

 

Photo of Jacquie by Malakai Design Photography

Photo of Raven: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Female_adult_raven.jpg

By Bombtime [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

 

Know thyself: A conversation with Dr. Lisa Mitchell about writing

Academic Writing, Anthropology, Cognitive process and writing, Creative writing, Dissertation writing, Environment, Faculty member, Feedback, Focus strategies, Inspiration and motivation, Make writing social, Motivation, Organization/ Order, Outlines, Planning, Productivity, Structure, Visuals, Writing process

By Madeline Walker with Lisa Mitchell

Last week, I wandered over to Cornett to visit Dr. Lisa Mitchell, Associate Professor and Graduate Student Adviser in the Department of Anthropology. We sat together in her cozy office on a cool March afternoon to talk about writing—a favourite topic for both of us.

Dr. Lisa M. Mitchell

I asked Lisa about her own graduate school experience—could she share any tips gleaned from writing her dissertation? Lisa admitted that she didn’t become as “deeply reflective about how to write and especially what to do if writing doesn’t go smoothly” until she had her own graduate students.  We agreed that we often learn best by teaching. Lisa’s experience supervising graduate students exposed her both to students who experienced writing as pleasurable and to students who experienced writing as terrifying, and this helped her to a realization.  “I needed to get more reflective about my own writing practice and what I might offer to them to work through problems or how to take the writing to a deeper level.” Here Lisa touched on a theme she returned to several times during our dialogue: self-reflection in writing. As we become aware of our writing process, we come to know and accept ourselves as writers, and therefore we become more effective at writing, making the most of our idiosyncratic methods.

Garnered from both her own writing experience and her experience supervising, Lisa shared some of the ways she guides graduate students when they run into writing trouble. “Don’t assume that writing is easy and don’t assume it’s something natural. Take it as an  aspect of your learning process. It’s a skill and needs to be practiced. Do it regularly so it becomes a habit and something you think about through that regular engagement.”

Lisa noted that in anthropology, writing is sometimes the site or space for analysis, and students may get stuck in their writing because they are “still in the process of figuring out the analysis and trying to sort it out.”  She went on to describe several ways to overcome barriers that arise when we try to think things through before writing them down.  “When I start a piece, it’s not unusual for me to have a very hazy, broad idea of what I’m talking about, but when I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, I am working out the analysis as much as I am working out the narrative structure.” Lisa paused thoughtfully. “When things don’t go well, when you start to stumble in writing, change it up a little bit. Pick a different topic for even a few minutes or a day or two. If you’ve been sitting with your computer, stop and try pen and paper. In some of my classes, I have a session where you get a sentence fragment to start and you have to keep writing for five minutes.  Just do freewriting. Unleash the initial apprehension about starting a writing session.”

Lisa also finds that using visual tools can help shift stuck writing.  “I rely very heavily on making diagrams with my students when working through not just writing but analysis. I need to move between the word, the mind map, and the flow chart, and sometimes it is enormously helpful to sit and talk about what you are trying to write and try to represent it visually. So you have both a sense of the component elements of your writing, but also there is something very freeing, very stimulating in moving away from the word and putting it into circles and arrows.”

Another method Lisa uses when she needs to change things up is voice. “I turn on a recorder and just start talking. Sometimes it’s just me and my dogs and I’m going to start somewhere, sometimes in the middle or sometimes I think this is where I want this paper to end up. It’s a bit time consuming because you have to go back and see if there’s anything you really wanted and at times there is and at times there isn’t, but generally that process begins to bring to the surface bits and pieces that I know need to be in the piece I’m working on.”

Lisa then stressed the importance of sharing your writing: “We end up writing in little closed off spaces and there is much value in thinking about how you can make the writing more social. Talk to other people about writing – don’t assume that other people are writing without problems, without crisis.  Sometimes, talking to other people about what you are writing is a way to express it differently.”

This led Lisa to think about how she shares her own work with colleagues: “I think particularly among faculty we are unwilling to share our unfinished, our unpolished drafty drafts, and I think there is enormous value in working through even some of the basic foundational elements of an argument or the structure of a piece by being willing to open yourself up a bit.”  She elaborated on the metaphor of writing as conversation, a metaphor that can liberate us from the intimidating prospect of writing a thesis or dissertation:  “Think of writing as a creative process. If you load it up by saying ‘I have to write my dissertation,’ that’s such a daunting process, whereas if you say ‘I want to ask some interesting questions’ and ‘I want to engage in some conversations,’ it’s so much more doable, and it also feels like something that is much more like our everyday lives. Although there are certain requirements for a dissertation or a thesis in the level of academic language, and you are engaging sources in a way you wouldn’t ordinarily in everyday conversation, by metaphorically framing what you’re doing as engaging in a conversation and asking interesting questions, you don’t take on that huge burden: ‘Now I must create original knowledge’ in five or seven chapters or whatever.”

I agreed that the conversation metaphor is very useful in academic writing, mentioning a helpful writing text based on the idea of dialogue, They Say/ I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing by Graff and Birkenstein (2010).

As the clock crept closer to the end of our allotted time, I asked Lisa for any further thoughts on how she writes best, and she reiterated the importance of opening up about your writing:  “I sometimes think the reason we don’t talk about what we’re writing is there’s always a risk that we won’t finish it, so we don’t talk about it.” “Yes,” I said, “like telling people you’re quitting smoking then starting again.”  Lisa laughed. “The list of things we would like to write is always longer than the list of what we actually manage to write, but I don’t think there’s any real shame in that. Sometimes part of the creative process is working through the possibilities and then settling on the one or the two that you’re ready to actually write.  I tend to think of myself as a non-linear writer, so I really am one of those people that sometimes just starts in the middle. I kind of know where I should end up, but I’m not too sure where I’m starting from. I think by this point in my career I’ve made peace with that process; I don’t stress about it very much anymore and I’ve also made peace with the fact that sometimes I start articles or writing pieces that don’t get finished. Sometimes I lose interest, and other times I can’t figure out a way to tell the story that is compelling to others. It may be something I found deeply interesting, but I think why would other people care about this?”

The ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself,” from a memento mori mosaic from excavations in the convent of San Gregorio in Rome

I responded: “What I am taking away from what you have said, Lisa, is that self-reflection, self-knowledge about being a writer is extremely important. Once we know what kind of writer we are, we can make peace with that, work with it, instead of thinking we ought to be a certain way.” Lisa nodded in agreement. I left feeling validated—I am one of those “start in the messy middle” writers, and I was happy to know that others worked productively, even confidently, in this manner.  Thank you, Lisa, for sharing these ideas.  There’s no shame in being the writer you know you are. . . in fact, it’s cause for celebration. Writer, know thyself.

 

 

Lisa M. Mitchell is Associate Professor and Graduate Advisor in Anthropology at UVic. Her research interests are at the intersection of bodies, technology, and inequalities. She has conducted research on prenatal testing, perinatal loss and reproductive politics in Canada, on the visualizing technologies of medicine, especially ultrasound fetal imaging, on experiences and meanings of body and risk among impoverished children and their families in the Philippines and among street youth in Canada, and on bereaved parents’ use of social media.

 

 

 

 

Just do it: Enter our contest now!

Blogs and blogging, Centre for Academic Communication, Contest, Creative writing, Environment, Graduate student writers, Inspiration and motivation, Social media, Web-based writing groups, Writing coaches, Writing groups, Writing process, Writing resources

photo of student writing near a windowGraduate  students:  Tell your writing story

For a chance to win a prize, enter our blog post contest about how the University of Victoria’s extraordinary environment matters to your writing.

Describe where you love to write, take a picture of yourself in that location, and share with us how the amazing environment at the University of Victoria and its environs inspire your writing.

Or, describe who helps you write: a writing group, counsellor, tutor, librarian, instructor, supervisor, or friend? Tell us how this relationship matters to you and your writing and include a photo of yourself and whoever makes UVic an extraordinary environment for you and your writing.

Submit your entries (blog post plus photo) to cdrcac@uvic.ca by 11:59 p.m., February 28, 2018 for a chance to win one of three prizes:

  • First prize: $100 gift certificate at UVic Bookstore
  • Second and third prizes: $50 gift certificates at UVic Bookstore

Winning entries will be published on the Graduate Student Writers’ Community blog.

Please read the Contest RULES

 

 

 

 

Hidden gems: A conversation about writing with Dr. Anne Bruce

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Creative writing, Dissertation writing, Faculty member, Feedback, Graduate student writers, Outlines, Productivity, Reading, School of Nursing, Tutoring, Voice, Writing process, , ,
Dr. Anne Bruce

By Madeline Walker

Late one Friday afternoon in January, I sat across from Anne in the Bibliocafé to talk about writing. The metal gates were being drawn around the food counter, and most seats were empty as students went off to their week-end activities.  In her role as the Associate Director of Graduate Education at UVic’s School of Nursing, Anne meets with many graduate students struggling with writing their theses and dissertations. The first thing I asked Anne was, “How can students be effective writers?”

Anne was quick to respond: “Write a lot. Engage in conversation with what you are reading—make notes, be in conversation with the author.” Anne recommended that students engage in note-taking at every stage of the dissertation.  Take notes during your coursework, your research, your data analysis.  “Very soon,” she said, “you will start to make connections.  The analytic process is fostered through organizing one’s thoughts through writing.”

Note-taking, Anne suggests, can also be in the form of a reflective journal, a vehicle that gives you “permission to be footloose and fancy free. Especially when doing research. You can include everything. Include whatever’s happening, the feeling of being blocked, the emotional experience of writing, the personal—everything—follow all lines of thought.”  Anne’s eyes lit up when she remembered how an entry she made in her reflective journal while on vacation led to musing about the verb “to vacate,” an observation that ended up in her dissertation.  “You never know what gems will come up,” Anne smiled.

This talk of gems got us onto the topic of voice: How do students find their own way of writing?  Anne suggested you be alert to writing that really engages you, writing that evokes a sense of aliveness. “Read to get a sense of what moves you,” she said. “If a writer really speaks to you, acknowledge that—take the writing apart—ask yourself, what is it about the style that is evocative? Don’t mimic the writing, but look at structure and style and make it your own.”

“Who do you like? Who moves you?” I asked.  Anne didn’t skip a beat. “Gary Rolfe writes with passion. I’ve found his voice clear and strong, the confidence.  He has an opinion,” she continued. “His writing borders on polemic, and my tendency is to be temperate, but polemic has its place,” she said with a wry grin.

Engage in note-taking at every stage of dissertation writing.

“Anybody else?” I asked. “Sally Gadow, a poetic philosopher,” Anne replied.  “She gave me permission to write that way. And another writer is Patti Lather—she writes fractured text, visually
‘saying’ what she means.  For example, she embeds boxes in her work that disrupt the writing.”

Anne and I talked about how students can gain inspiration from writers they admire, how they can play with writing, not taking it too seriously.  She reminded me that just as an academic writer’s body of work changes over time, so does the writing of graduate students as they develop their own styles and voices.

We shifted to another topic.  What about writers who struggle with writing and self-expression?  Anne suggests that grad students do an honest self-assessment of their writing, and if they need to learn the basics, then they can set out to learn them. It’s never too late to figure out how to work with an outline, to practice using mind-maps, to learn how to signpost and summarize.  This was the perfect opportunity for me to point out that graduate students can make appointments with tutors at the Centre for Academic Communication to work on any aspect of their communication skills.

Fittingly, my last question for Anne was about finishing; how do students finish a long writing project when they feel stuck?  Her answer was that we need to “acknowledge and work with fear and resistance. It’s part of the process, inherent to a sense of identity. It feels vulnerable to write, but we must find a way to be with it.”

One of the reasons students get stuck is that they get paralyzed by feedback from supervisors and committee members.  Anne had this recommendation: “Try not to take feedback personally, learn from it, and know that you don’t have to accept it, especially comments about style or approach. You can differentiate what is helpful and leave the rest.”  Anne also cautioned about “seeking feedback too early. In writing’s formative stages, things are in process. It’s a messy incubation period, and if you seek feedback from your supervisor too soon, the work can become even messier. You may get advice you don’t want to follow, which complicates your relationships. Instead, find peers who might be helpful, trustworthy, and honest.”

The winter sky turned purple and orange beyond the quad: It was time to part ways.  Anne had to go meet some PhD students at the Grad House and my work day was over.  But before we left each other, Anne added a lovely parting gift: “I know that students, as they build confidence, will write themselves into their dissertations.”

Thank you for the wise and encouraging words, Anne.  May we all trust the writing process.

Dr. Anne Bruce has been with UVic since 2003. Her approaches to research and teaching invite students into (un)speakable and in-between spaces of our professional and personal lives. Her current scholarship includes understanding nurses’ experiences with medical assistance in dying and integrating contemplative approaches into teaching and learning. She believes education can inspire, transform, and generate life-long friendships.​

 

 

How writing fiction helped me write my dissertation

Academic Writing, Computer science, Creative writing, Dissertation writing, Editors and editing, Fiction writing, Goal setting, Graduate student writers, Productivity, Time management, Writing coaches, Writing process, Writing resources

By Russell Campbell

Somewhere in my academic career I started trying to write novels. It wasn’t a decision I can pinpoint. It crept up on me through multiple fronts: my sister working for the Greater Victoria Public Library; a past girlfriend who had a sister married to the brother of epic-fantasy author Brandon Sanderson; free lectures for writing fiction by Brandon Sanderson on YouTube; a past roommate on the autism spectrum whose life revolved around fiction; and many friends who dabble with the idea of writing stories. Combine all this with my unending curiosity, and the result is years of my dissertation developing in parallel with multiple creative writing projects.

Underneath the curiosity, I felt that if I could write a novel, then a dissertation would be that much easier because I would have full command of the written English language. I should point out that my research area is in the sciences. If I could find a way for my brain to run a marathon, creative writing seemed like a healthy exercise.

As the years marched on, and my commitment to learn the craft of storytelling grew more earnest, I came to the realization that most authors spend at least four dedicated years in a degree program writing essays to refine their skills—which I don’t have—so there’s probably still a long way for me to go here. Upgrade my efforts to an ultra-marathon after bench pressing 500 lbs. Probably not healthy.

So I can save you the troubles I’ve been through and point you in the right direction if, like me, you also want to push your brain to its limits. If you are in the sciences, my suggestions are overkill, but still have benefits, and if you are not, then they might just be a nice addition to your skill set. Perhaps you want to write novels. In my present case, a wonderful surprise turned out to be how much easier it is to write documents of any kind, especially career oriented ones such as cover letters and teaching statements. It also made getting feedback from my supervisor much more tolerable.

The best piece of advice I can give is to make writing a part of every day. The easiest way to do this is to combine it with whatever entertainment you consume. Take notes on the shows you watch. I use Google Drive for this and all my other notes on writing. Most shows out there have commentary by YouTube podcasts and I look for those that grow my vocabulary.

There’s no shortage of videos online and books you can get on becoming an author. I found many of them to be repetitive. However, sadly, much of the advice is not helpful, and I have been fortunate to find the few sources that can actually prove it with science. A great place to start learning how to write fiction properly, no matter what your skill level, is a book called Story Genius, by Lisa Cron. She debunks the useless advice, and gives you a plan that avoids the big editing mistakes that waste time.

I’ve spent a lot of my education using formal logic, so I was delighted to see that writing approached from the perspective of journalism makes heavy use of logic. Finding topics is a matter of exploring logical patterns in everything you observe and proving their existence. Trying to refine this skill has helped me in my research, since this is creativity in a nutshell. This process is explained robustly in A Writer’s Coach, by Jack R. Hart.

Actually, I do have course credits with a superb textbook for grammar, and I still reference it often: Understanding English Grammar, by Martha Kolln and Robert Funk. I consider this the resource for word and sentence-level expertise only. Beyond this, if you want to know the impression your writing leaves, then Writing Tools, by Roy Peter Clark brings a large set of available skills. If you need advice at the story level, a freelance editor named Ellen Brock on YouTube provides not only videos, but organizes a novel boot camp on occasion. On her blog, she gives feedback on story submissions, and I find this is a good gauge to compare myself with other wannabe authors.

Creative writing course lectures for Brandon Sanderson’s BYU class are on YouTube. There are multiple iterations of it, each on different channels, but the most recent one for winter 2016 on Camera Panda really is the best one to watch, both in terms of video quality and content. Ignore the advice on the spectrum between plotting a novel or free-writing one. There’s no way around planning your writing if you don’t want to throw away much of what you write and you want an effective outcome.

I’m looking to connect with other fiction writers to form a support group. If you are interested email me at: ctrain79@uvic.com

Russell Campbell is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science and has completed a Master of Science in discrete mathematics, both at the University of Victoria, as well as a Bachelor of Science in mathematics at the University of the Fraser Valley.