On writing

Today at the Inclusive Education monthly research meeting Ann-Marie Priest and I talked about our respective experiences as writers. It was a fascinating discussion, particularly from Ann-Marie who is currently finishing a book looking at the experiences of four Australian women writers through the lens of writing as a vocation. While we talked about quite different experiences we each expressed in different ways the need to find a voice that balances the conventions the academic writing with our own ideas, thoughts, style and personal opinions. We each also talked about our inspiration for writing about the topics we do. Both of us acknowledged that writing is a way of making sense of the world around us. For Ann-Marie her personal experiences in various jobs and the quest for a "vocation" or place in the world has drawn her to looking at other women who have wrestled with the same issue in their lives. I could relate to this as I'm still not sure what it is I'm going to do with my life but it has something to do with teaching, communication, exchanging ideas (large and small) with others. I talked about the intersection between personal writing (blogging, twittering) with academic writing and what each offers to the other. Twitter is teaching me to be succinct and clear. Blogging has taught me to write without fear, without the need to obsessively reread, rewrite and redo everything I write over and over. All of these skills continue to have an impact on my "academic writing" in that I am continuing to become aware of the flow of my writing, as well as the expression of ideas with clarity. Probably the key point (for me at least) that Ann-Marie made went something like this: We don't write about something because we fully understand it. We write about something in order to try and make sense of it for ourselves. All writing is personal. As writers we are our most important readers.