This post is an essay by Devon Halliday. Here's a link to the original. She's exploring an issue that I have addressed here -- the importance of making the first page of anything you're writing a real grabber. This is particularly a problem for academic writers, who tend to hold back the good stuff -- the … Continue reading Devon Halliday — How to Write a First Page that Grabs the Reader
This post is an essay by Devon Halliday, "Literary Fiction Has Lost the Plot," recently published in her Substack. Here's a link to the original. I'm less interested in her critique of literary fiction, which I generally don't read, than in her tight focus on the need for writers to grab the reader on the … Continue reading Devon Halliday — Literary Fiction Has Lost the Plot
This post is a piece of mine that was published a few years ago in Inside Higher Ed. Here’s a link to the original. It's also included in my newish book, Being a Scholar. It’s about an inherent tension in the act of writing between arrogance and humility. AN EXERCISE IN ARROGANCE AND HUMILITY TO BE … Continue reading Writing as an Exercise in Arrogance and Humility
This post is an overview of the book I published several years ago. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and a paperback. The title is Being a Scholar: Reflections on Doctoral Study, Scholarly Writing, and Academic Life. Below is the book’s introduction, which provides the rationale for the book and summarizes the eleven pieces that you … Continue reading Being a Scholar
This post is an essay by Adam Kirsch from the Atlantic. Here's a link to the original. It's the most heartening piece I've read about the crucial role for human creativity in the grim new world of artificial intelligence. As he points out, the rise of photography created a crisis for painters, who found that … Continue reading Adam Kirsch — Why AI Can Never Replace Human Ingenuity
This post is piece was originally published in Aeon in December, 2018 (a British publication, thus the spelling). Here's a link to the original. It is an analysis of the engine for scholarly production in American higher education. The issue is that the university is a unique work setting in which the usual organizational incentives … Continue reading The Lust for Academic Fame
This post is an overview of my life as a scholar. I presented an oral version in my job talk at Stanford in 2002. The idea was to make sense of the path I’d taken in my scholarly writing up to that point. What were the issues I was looking at and why? How did … Continue reading Getting It Wrong — Rethinking a Life in Scholarship
This post is a reminder about my most recent books. As a retired guy with time on his hands, I decided -- what the hell -- to self-publish three books in the last three years. Kindle Direct Publishing makes this possible. I thought it might be useful to put together collections of my papers and … Continue reading Three Books
Good writers tell stories. This is just as true for academic writers as for novelists and journalists. The story needs actors and actions, and it needs to flow. A sentence is a mini-story. Each sentence needs to flow into the next and so does each paragraph. When readers finish your paper, they need to be … Continue reading Academic Writing Issues: Failing to Tell a Story
One of the most prominent and dysfunctional traits of academic writing is its heavy reliance on what Helen Sword, in the piece below, calls "zombie nouns." These are cases when the writer takes an agile verb or adjective and transforms it into an imposing-looking noun with lead feet. Just add the proper suffix to a … Continue reading Academic Writing Issues: Zombie Nouns
