Writing Material

Habits of Productive Academic Writers

As part of my interest in questions regarding digital scholarship, I’m beginning to pursue notions of “value” or “quality” or “rigor” (that’s right, Kenny) in print publications. So I ordered a copy of Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition (Olson & Taylor, eds.). When it arrived today, I immediately turned to the chapter by Robert Boice about the writing practices of scholars who manage to get a lot of writing done. I haven’t yet looked to see which disciplines his subjects wrote in, or other important questions like those, but I wanted to share a few of the habits he’s identified as a psychology researcher. Here they are:

1. Wait actively.
I wasn’t totally sure of what he meant by this at first, but it seems that it has much to do with waiting for the sake of waiting. Forcing yourself to wait, even when you feel ready to begin. I see it as sort of a centering technique. Calming. He suggests that it is essential to effectively pacing yourself.

2. Begin early.
Even when you don’t think you’re ready. Begin for the sake of beginning. No excuses.

3. Brief daily sessions.
Keeps a consistence pace over the course of a project. Distributes cognitive workload over multiple sessions. Rhythm develops a habit.

4. Stop.
Don’t get fatigued, even if the writing is going well. It’s probably not worth it, it you’ll take the next day off.

5. Invest in preliminaries.
This has something to do with preparing to write. Outlining, brainstorming, etc. He encourages the writer to balance preparedness with flexibility.

6. Reduce Negative Thinking.
Monitor your thoughts and combat the negatives.

7. Moderate emotions.
Euphoria and despair while working are both counterproductive to the consistency for which he argues.

These seem like great ideas, but they also seem pretty self-evident. I guess they do contradict some traditional notions of writing like waiting for inspriration or getting lost in the “flow” of the zone. So I’m going to work to give these a try. I’m also going to add something about setting output goals for myself. I’ll keep you updated.

Citation: Boice, Robert. “Work Habits of Productive Scholarly Writers: Insights from Research in Psychology.” Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. Ed. Gary A. Olson & Todd Taylor. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. 211-228.

Cultural Materialist Critique and Digital Scholarship

(This entry is a copy of my proposal for the Computers and Writing Conference happening this summer in Davis. If you’d like an explanation for why I think it’s a good idea to post these proposals to my blog, here’s an old entry offering some reasons.)

Proposal

This presentation explores ways in which the intellectual value of digital composition scholarship might be investigated within cultural materialist strategies focusing specifically on hardware and software necessary for academic work.

Cultural materialist critique allows for the confluence of multiple scholarly interests as they intersect at the point of digital composition technologies. As a rough example, this presentation sketches out the interdependence of three distinct material conditions of contemporary writing practices: interface design, data storage, and disciplinary notions of intellectual value. Treating each of these conditions as a distinct product of a specific set of historical and cultural influences allows for a complex and nuanced discussion of their interaction.

For instance, the intellectual value of composition scholarship is traditionally evaluated on, among other criteria, the reliability and citation of its source material. This concern often privileges print sources over those viewed as “virtual”. But this criterion is heavily influenced by specific perceptions of the “reliability” and “virtuality” of digital data digital storage. Yet an historical understanding of digital sources reveals that digital storage is hardly virtual and in many ways more reliable than print sources. Interfaces, too, complicate this picture. While in one sense, making these sources more accessible to more readers, often those same interfaces interfere with preferences for consistency across variable layouts, multiple versions, and reader participation.

Cultural materialist critiques of this sort allow scholars to make sense of the often paradoxical relationship writers have with technology. Instead of puzzling at or calling into question the ways digital technologies compromise traditional practices, this approach focuses on the continued critique and development of these questions in conversation with each other.

Posthuman Superheroes: The Evolution of Human into Machine

(This entry is a copy of my proposal for the Louisville Conference on Literature since 1900 happening later this spring. If you’d like an explanation for why I think it’s a good idea to post these proposals to my blog, here’s an old entry offering some reasons.)

Proposal

This paper draws on posthuman/cyborg theory in order to explore cultural anxieties about technology implicit in the recent Hollywood movies: The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk.

One of the primary themes of traditional cybernetic theory has been the relationship between humans and machines. Most cultural scholars following this line of inquiry have focused on the print texts of science fiction, eventually expanding into analysis of popular films. Most cybernetic theorists have focused on machines which have progressively come to resemble humans, such as robots, cyborgs, and artificially intelligent computers. Only recently, however, has there been a contemporary group of main human characters who have all made the ontological shift toward becoming machines.

Science fiction films have an admittedly long history of characters shedding their human forms for digital identities or incorporating mechanical components into their anatomies for various reasons. However, in recent Hollywood films, the technological transformations are far more subtle and varied. Iron Man is only a superhero to the extent that he designs, masters, and executes his own technology. Batman, too, relies on technology to heighten his human powers, but in his most recent incarnation, explores politics and the law as powerful social technologies. And while The Incredible Hulk might be the least subtle of all these characters, his superpowers are the product of tiny, genetic technologies, which are themselves part of a much larger military industrial technocracy. This paper draws on the work of various cyborg and posthuman theorists to argue that these aesthetic and narrative shifts in cybernetic attitudes reflect increasingly nuanced and complex understandings of both the hope and anxieties of current popular technological ideologies.