In this continuing series, Rachel Toor interviews scholars about their writing process and influences. Recent columns have featured interviews with Lillian Faderman, Deirdre McCloskey, Steven Pinker, Carlo Rotella, and Helen Sword.
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AdviceScholars Talk Writing: Roxane Gay
“Allow yourself to be terrified to take risks and take those risks anyway.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Patricia A. Matthew
“The failure to support new scholars with stable university positions is the biggest threat to research innovations.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Tressie McMillan Cottom
“Part of my personal political project is naturalizing the sound of expert information in a Black American woman’s voice.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: A Big Book From a Little Press
How West Virginia University Press landed an award-winning story collection and what its success means for small academic presses. -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Cathy N. Davidson
“I know many people say never write when you can be distracted. It’s the opposite for me. Distraction is important.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Louis P. Masur
“In graduate school I learned how to find facts, but the profession only wanted them presented in a certain way.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: John K. Roth
A Holocaust scholar and philosopher talks about writing, faculty retirement, and scholarly friendships. -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Martha S. Jones
A Johns Hopkins historian, whose new book on Black women’s suffrage is out this month, shares the legal, academic, and artistic influences that come together in her work. -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Vincent Brown
A Harvard social historian of the African diaspora and Atlantic slavery seeks to tell unfamiliar stories “without letting the power of anti-Blackness stand in for Black history.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Eve L. Ewing
“For some academics,” says Eve L. Ewing, “inaccessibility is the coin of the realm. For some, you prove your expertise by restricting your own legibility to as few people as possible.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Eric Jager
What’s it like for an academic to see his book turn into a movie starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon? -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Kate Brown
“Since I was in graduate school, I have had a problem with the exclusive use of the third-person voice,” the MIT professor says. -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: T.J. Stiles
“Write the kind of book you enjoy reading. If you’re not a part of your own audience, you’ll be faking it.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Stanley Hauerwas
“There is nothing I am not interested in. That’s my strength. My weakness is there is nothing I am not interested in.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: How a Literary Agent Views Academic Books
“If you don’t understand the need to make an argument in scholarly writing, you don’t understand scholarship.” -
Advice
Lessons Learned From ‘Shark Tank’ on Writing Book Proposals
Much like the “sharks,” publishers prod and poke and quickly suss out whether you have what it takes and whether they’ll invest in your book. -
Advice
When It Comes to Waiting, I Really Could Care Less
Does waiting to hear a verdict on your work get easier as you advance in your career? No, it does not. -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: How Does a Book Editor Find Projects?
Naomi Schneider, an executive editor at the University of California Press, talks shop about publishing. -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Do Book Editors Do Much Editing?
A new essay collection on “what editors do” is an essential read for anyone who hopes to get published. -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Carlo Rotella
“There’s deep pleasure in working on your chops, and deep reward in being part of a community of inquiry with students who are working on theirs.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Christie Henry
“Most scientists I know are wonderful storytellers, but they are taught from early in their careers to edit out the story, to redact the personal.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Helen Sword
Frustration is “not an impediment to successful writing,” but “a necessary part of the process.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Michael C. Munger
“Journal reviewers can seem like angry trolls, blocking the bridge to publication.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Ruth Behar
“I look at the words on the page as if I were arranging flowers in a vase.” -
Page Proof
Scholars Talk Writing: Carl Elliott
“In academic writing you’re given a lot of latitude to be boring.” -
Page Proof
Scholars Talk Writing: Jennifer Crusie
“It’s an incredibly arrogant act to publish anything.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Steven Pinker
“Good prose requires dedication to the craft of writing, and our profession simply doesn’t reward it.” -
Page Proof
Scholars Talk Writing: Jay Parini
“You have to write a lot to get better at writing,” so “don’t stop.” -
Page Proof
Scholars Talk Writing: Michael Bérubé
“I still have the standard anxiety of a struggling musician: Regardless of the gig, I want to be invited back.” -
Page Proof
Scholars Talk Writing: Deirdre McCloskey
“I can’t tell whether any improvement is because I became a woman, or because I finally grew up.” -
Page Proof
Scholars Talk Writing: James M. McPherson
To be called a “popularizer” is the kiss of death for an academic only if the actual writing is sloppy and sensationalized. -
Page Proof
Scholars Talk Writing: Laura Kipnis
“Ideally you want to be an id on the first draft and a superego on the second.” -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Camille Paglia
“Good Lord, I certainly learned nothing about writing from grad school!” -
Page Proof
Scholars Talk Writing: Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Why a philosopher applies Kantian ethics to writing. -
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Scholars Talk Writing: Sam Wineburg
How a Stanford professor, known for his work on “historical thinking,” learned to trust his own voice. -
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Scholars Talk Writing: Anthony Grafton
A Princeton historian is a teacher, scholar, and collaborator — but not, he says, a writer.
