Category Archives: creative writing

Ten quick ideas for refreshing your writing #AcWriMo

It’s nearly November. And that means its AcWriMo. Academic Writing Month. The idea of Acwrimo is to use the month of November to make major headway on a big writing project. Or to kick start a writing project. Or to … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, acwrimo, creative writing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

refresh your writing ideas

Reading is key to developing your understandings of what makes good academic writing. Anthropologist Ruth Behar (2020) suggests that academic writers shouldn’t stop at the classic texts in their discipline, but also read other genres. She says We need to read poetry … Continue reading

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three thesis writing modes

It’s pretty common to hear academic writing described in three stages – (1) thinking and preparation or pre-writing, (2) writing, and (3) post writing revision. In the doctorate you do pre-writing until you get to ‘writing up’. And that’s when … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, creative writing, foundation, generation and response, Graeme Harper, three modes of writing | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

creative re-vision

  If you have a writing practice which begins with a quickly written and almost inevitably loose first draft, then you need a range of strategies that you can call on to beat the text into shape. And even if … Continue reading

Posted in creative writing, play, revision, revision strategy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

use a vignette – #wakeupreader

Most readers, even academic ones, like a bit of a story. And a vignette is just a bit of a story, a condensed version. A vignette is brief, evocative and descriptive. It provides information about key points of an event … Continue reading

Posted in #wakeupreader, creative writing, introduction, narrative, Uncategorized, vignette | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

creativity and academic writing – an oxymoron?

I’ve been pondering the question of creativity in academic writing. One of my research interests is creative pedagogies, including but by no means exclusively in the arts. I’ve been thinking that I ought to say more about creativity in relation … Continue reading

Posted in academic blogging, academic book, academic writing, creative writing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

read what you want to write

One of the common pieces of advice given to creative writers is to read widely, work out what you like and then write like those you admire. This writing-like-admirable-others requires the aspiring creative writer to analyse various aspects of the … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, conversation, creative writing, debates in the field, disciplines, doctoral education | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

dealing with negative f2f feedback

So you’ve sent the chapter to your supervisor and now you have to go and see what they think. You’re pretty pleased with what you’ve done, but when the conversation starts it goes almost immediately to the problems. You want … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, creative writing, feedback | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

holiday question 1: Why are there so few Academic Writing courses?

This is a guest post from Julia Molinari from the School of Education, The University of Nottingham. Julia is currently doing doctoral research into ‘academic writing’. A range of motivations, both personal and professional, have triggered the following observations, and … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, courses, creative writing, Julia Molinari | Tagged , , , | 16 Comments

why write book chapters

I like writing book chapters. If you look at my publications – well I don’t mean you to do this literally – but IF you did, you’d see that I’ve written quite a lot of them. In the last month … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, authorship, chapter, creative writing | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments