It is About Fun Stuff! Thinking About the Writing Process in Different Ways

Abstract

Publish or perish! Publish or perish! The alarm rings out. The academic under pressure to publish is a significant issue in the contemporary academy because of the constraints of what this productivity means and what this pressure to publish does. Publish or perish is an active force because of its permeation throughout the contemporary academy. But we think this force can be encountered and made into a response, positioning ourselves differently in relation to academic writing. In this chapter, we focus on the notion of making academic writing together as a mindful activity interspersed with moments of creative making . The chapter draws on our reflexive thinking with our writing collaboration for the project Academics who Tweet which is an investigation of our, and 34 other academics’, practices, identities and use of social media in academia . We are attending to this thinking and writing to show that the force of publish or perish thinking can be mindfully counted through a response of creatively making. We present a case to rethink the approach to academic writing and the ways we creatively construct a response; a response that encompasses making in different ways that sustain collaborations, networks and relations. We argue that in thinking mindfully through and with the process of making academic writing, we are able to transform it into a pattern of generative thinking and writing. We conclude by suggesting that it is the relations we are making that become a way to encounter the force and material of academic writing .