Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write

emotional ambivalence about writing is the norm rather than the exception for most academics.

figurative language inflects the stories we tell about ourselves and our writing.

My self-confidence as a writer and scholar is fed by many replenishing springs: by my own passion for my research, by the encouraging feedback of the people about whom and for whom I write, by the love and support of my family and closest friends, and by the strategies for redemptive “re-storying” that I have learned while working on this book.

The more pleasurable the activity, I found, the more likely it was to initiate a new spate of productive writing within the next day or two.

I allowed this one to grow organically, like coral: a new paragraph or profile here, a “Things to Try” section there.

So I began to play with more organic, nonlinear ways of writing, paying close attention to my rhythms and moods at different times of the day.

the trick was not to exchange one for the other but to find creative ways of combining the two.

“You should be enjoying your sabbatical,” a wise colleague counseled me. “It’s supposed to be a time of renewal, a time to slow down and take pleasure in intellectual activity. God rested on the seventh day, remember?”

practicality and beauty can be soul mates rather than enemies? What happens when we invite positive emotions and language into our writing practice—and encourage them to make themselves at home?