On iTunes U Emory University has a workshop on academic publishing that is available for free download (you will need iTunes in order for the link to work).  Some of the sessions include: How to Publish in a Top Journal, How Should Authors Think of Authorship and Research?, Editorial Strategies and Refereeing, and The Use of Journal Rankings in the Selection of Publication Outlets.  Enjoy!

Professors complain endlessly about how boring their students’ papers are, but we rarely stop to think that the students are just writing what we tell them to write. And what do we tell them to write? — imitations of the articles such as appear in scholarly journals. And since we find those crushingly boring, what do we expect when we assign inexperienced writers to do imitations of them?

–Alan Jacobs at the Text Patterns blog

At some point all of us suffer from the dreaded malady called ‘Writer’s Block.’  The symptoms include a sluggish brain–empty of any ideas of publishable quality.  It is as if we have a cinder block on our shoulders instead of a brain, hence the term (nice midrash, huh?).  Not to worry, there are a few remedies and, thankfully, none include a co-pay:

1. Get back into the primary data.  I find that when I spend some time way from reading texts in the original languages, sifting through the musings of those engaged in manual labor (otherwise termed ‘archaeologists’), or squinting at some arcane tablet, I start to run out of publishable ideas.  However, within half an hour of jumping back into the data the steady stream of questions to solve starts flowing.
2. Read thoughtful but provocative people.  Once I have some new ideas sloshing around my head a million agreements or objections spring up faster than kudzu.  Also, try doing this with scholars that are outside your field–often times trends in other disciplines can impact you own areas.
3. Take a walk.  If you are just hitting your head against the wall and nothing is happening then take a break.  Go outside and walk around the block.  If that doesn’t work take a mental vacation: mow the grass, retile the bathroom, weekend in Paris, whatever–the goal is to give your mind a rest so that when you come back to writing you are fresh and ready to go.

Do you have any tips on how to generate ideas for writing?

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.  There are few more profoundly atheistic statements as this.

However, most people are practical atheists when it comes to aesthetics–they view it as just a matter of preference.  This is why people get so upset, even viscerally so, when someone suggests that their sense of beauty is not as developed as it should be.  Because beauty is merely a matter of choice, for someone to regard one choice as inferior to another choice the discussion disentigrates into a power struggle of who gets to set the rules on what is beautiful and what isn’t.

But, to deny objective characteristics of beauty is a rejection of a Christian worldview.  If one is an atheist then of course there is no beauty and each person is free to define it as they wish.  However, within a Christian framework God is the definition of beauty and the death and resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate expression of it.  Want to define beauty?  Look to God’s own creative expression in the universe, look to his character, look to the cross.

When we do this we find a great many criteria with which we can discern true beauty.   For example, in order for something to be beautiful it must be at the same time complex yet have an underlying simplicity or unity.  We see this most clearly in the trinity–God is complex because he is three persons yet there is unity in one being.  So, great art must be complex without being chaotic and it must be simple without being simplistic.  This might sound easy, but it is far from it.

Another characteristic of beauty is timelessness.  God is eternal, we will never become bored by contemplating his glory.  In like manner, great art must cause deeper reflection and satisfaction through repeated or extended exposure.  This is why pop music by its very design can never be great art.  It is a product that is designed to gain instant appeal and gather a faddish following to be consumed and then discarded to make way for the next release.  This is why fashion is fashion and not true art–the industry is designed to produce products that are consumed and discarded with every passing season.  Now, this is not to say that every pop musician and every designer is not an artist; there are a few that do break the mold and courageously flourish in an industry structure that works against them.

Another characteristic of great art is that it incorporates joy, love, grace, and truth while at the same time also the suffering, messiness, destruction, and evil within the world.  We see this most clearly in the cross.  Art that only reflects one or another of these characteristics is not truly beautiful.  This is not to say that an individual piece cannot focus upon one of these aspects–it surely can.  However, if an artist’s entire repertoire only consists in a one-sided portrayal of reality then they do not have a sufficiently developed aesthetic.

These are only a few of the objective characteristics of beauty; there are many more.  Other than a recognition that beauty is objective, another vitally important aspect of aesthetics is a realization that sensibilities and tastes must be cultivated and actively developed.  We must train ourselves to appreciate and desire things that are truly of substance and beauty. Young children might desire Velveeta slices as opposed to well-aged Gorgonzola picante, but hopefully over time they will come to realize that Velveeta really isn’t cheese and they will fall in love with the smell and taste of the real thing.  Make no mistake about it–this is not snobbery, it is renewing your mind.  It is Romans 12:2 lived out in every facet of life including aesthetics.  

There is much more that we could say about these things, but this is a blog and not a book.  However, in the next post I hope to reflect on how scholars can incorporate a well-developed aesthetic sensibility into their writing.  I am certainly a novice myself so I welcome suggestions.

I went to my mailbox at the seminary last week and I found a nice note from the dean welcoming me to the school and offering a gift to encourage me–a book with the title, “How to Write More.”  My wife was with me and I started laughing, showed her the title and said, “Well, I guess I know what they want me to do here.”

Seriously though, if you’re in academics it is really important that you have a thriving writing life–you benefit and so do your students and the institution.  In my first faculty meeting the administration spent a lot of time on the topic of the faculty writing more.  But what I found particularly helpful was the fact that they didn’t just tell us to write more and then let us figure out how to do it by ourselves.  Instead, they brought in three publishers and had a panel discussion that covered all kinds of things like how to generate ideas, composing prospectuses, how to apportion time to actually write the book, etc.  It was a very helpful and inspiring meeting.

If you’re interested in some of the stuff we talked about, you can check out some links on the seminary’s internal blog.

Well, I need to get back to my writing projects…

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof [stool] detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.

We need to start passing these out at SBL meetings.

Here is another selection from Contanance Hale’s Sin and Syntax. In this quote she takes aim at a common problem in academic writing–cumbersome prepositional phrases. Enjoy and keep honing your writing skills this summer:

The most frequent prepositional sin is to replace one good, terse word with a stack of prepositional phrases. The worst prepositional train wrecks crop up in legal writing, with its herinbelows, with respect theretos, and therins. But lawyers are hardly the only offenders. Have you ever counted the number of ways windy writers and speakers avoid the direct adverb now:

as of now

at present

at this point in time

at this time

for the time being

in this day and age

in the not-too-distant future

Of course, none of these beats Alexander Haig’s all-time worst way not to say now: “at this juncture of maturization.”

Anytime you can replace a cluster of words with one elegant one, do it.¹

1. Constance Hale, Sin and Syntax (New York: Broadway Books, 1999): 104. [back]

Are you tired of jumbled, pompuous, rambling, and just plain crummy academic writing. I sure am. That’s why I’m trying to improve my own writing this Summer. In the spirit of top ten lists, here are my top ten impediments to beautiful academic writing. Some of you may be limbering up you fingers right now to fire off a comment that exposes the fact that beautiful academic writing is an oxymoron. Just to head you off–I don’t think it is. You may not have seen much academic writing that is beautiful–it is scarce–but I promise it’s out there. How about you and I commit to being the group of scholars that do produce beautiful writing. So, as we work at this, here is my list of the top ten things that will assure your writing is fit for the recycling bin:

1. Quoting a foreign language and not providing a translation. If you quote a source in a language that is different than the language of the body of your writing provide a translation–at least as a footnote. Hopefully your writing is valuable enough that a wide group of people will read it. So, help them out. Not all of them will know well the languages that you do. Furthermore, it’s pompous to not translate your citations and while you think you are showing off–you just look full of yourself. One of the minium requirements of an accredited, North American PhD program is that you have to pass competency tests in at least two modern scholarly languages other than your native tongue. Therefore, you’re not impressing me by showing off that you’ve met the minimum requirements. Translate your German, French, Akkadian and whatever else as a matter of courtesy.
2. Jargon. If you can say something in normal language–do it. Thorkild Jacobsen wrote a really great essay: “About the Sumerian Verb” Assyriological Studies 16 (1965): 71-101, but it was so full of jargon and unclear that the ideas that he presented have not circulated very well. Even Benno Landsberger said, “It is too high for me.” If Jacobsen had been more clear, his ideas would have gained more traction.
3. Endless, rambling writing. Less is more. If you can say it with fewer words, do it. If you have to write, “In other words…” it means that the first time you tried to say it you were unclear.
4. Being boring. You don’t have to put people to sleep to be an “academic.” Spice it up a bit.
5. Not using section headings. It helps the reader follow your writing if you have relevant subject headings.
6. A crappy index. Want people to cite your stuff? Make it easy for people to locate your ideas.
7. Don’t think outside the box. It takes courage to buck the status quo. People will mock you, scorn you, ridicule you, and snicker at the mention of your name. Do it anyway.
8. Think too far outside the box. Some ideas don’t need to be published, spoken, or even thought. Filter your ideas. Correlate them with data. Save some trees and reserve only your good ideas for the printing press.
9. Don’t write regularly. Good writing takes practice.
10. Don’t try to improve your writing. I’m not a born Hemingway and chances are neither are you. It takes conscious work to become a better writer.

Here is a great quote from Constance Hale’s Sin and Syntax (pp. 22-23):

Is it powermongering? Is it insecurity? Is it arrogance? Why do so many professors and professionals resort to pompous, ponderous, or just imponderable nouns?…Presense results when a writer preoccupied with his or her own diction loses sight of the primary goal: communicating with an audience. Choose words that are appropriate for the subject, the audience, and the forum. When a father talking to his child’s teacher mentions a “colloquy” with his seven-year-old daughter, he is not being articulate, he’s being ridiculous.

When you’ve got a choice, go with the plain talk, not the pomposity.

I came back from a wonderful weekend vacation and thought I would get back into a research and writing mindset by reading the new issue of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. I was quite frustrated with the quality of writing of the first article that I read. It took me three times as long as it should have because the author was anything but clear and concise. Furthermore, the article seemed pompous and as if the author was more concerned about showing off than of presenting an idea in a beautiful and helpful form.

I urge all academic writers to take concrete steps this summer to improve your writing. I certainly am. The most helpful resource that I have found for doing so is a post by Angie Erisman. In her post, Writing in Biblical Studies, she surveys books that will teach and/or motivate you to write more clearly, elegantly, concisely, and beautifully. I liked her post so much that I checked out every book she mentioned. Over the next few days I’ll have some great quotes from one book on Angie’s list– Constance Hale’s, Sin and Syntax.

If all of us purposefully worked to improve our writing skills our fields–and our careers–would be much better off.