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book: Writing with Pleasure
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Writing with Pleasure

  • Illustrator: and
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2023

About this book

An essential guide to cultivating joy in your professional and personal writing

Writing should be a pleasurable challenge, not a painful chore. Writing with Pleasure empowers academic, professional, and creative writers to reframe their negative emotions about writing and reclaim their positive ones. By learning how to cast light on the shadows, you will soon find yourself bringing passion and pleasure to everything you write.

Acclaimed international writing expert Helen Sword invites you to step into your “WriteSPACE”—a space of pleasurable writing that is socially balanced, physically engaged, aesthetically nourishing, creatively challenging, and emotionally uplifting. Sword weaves together cutting-edge findings in the sciences and social sciences with compelling narratives gathered from nearly six hundred faculty members and graduate students from across the disciplines and around the world. She provides research-based principles, hands-on strategies, and creative “pleasure prompts” designed to help you ramp up your productivity and enhance the personal rewards of your writing practice. Whether you’re writing a scholarly article, an administrative email, or a love letter, this book will inspire you to find delight in even the most mundane writing tasks and a richer, deeper pleasure in those you already enjoy.

Exuberantly illustrated by prizewinning graphic memoirist Selina Tusitala Marsh, Writing with Pleasure is an indispensable resource for academics, students, professionals, and anyone for whom writing has come to feel like a burden rather than a joy.

Author / Editor information

Helen Sword is professor emerita in the School of Humanities and the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the University of Auckland and founder of WriteSPACE, an international virtual writing community. Her books include Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write; The Writer’s Diet; and Stylish Academic Writing. Website helensword.com Selina Tusitala Marsh is a poet, academic, and illustrator whose books include three volumes of poetry and the Mophead series of graphic memoirs.

Reviews

"Sword succeeds in showing how even individuals who dread their own scholarly writing do, in fact, have memories of writing with pleasure. She challenges readers to invoke their own experiences and metaphors, learn from them, and channel as much of these positive contexts and conditions as possible into their scholarly writing practices. . . . The payoff? As Writing with Pleasure also demonstrates, pleasurable writing makes for pleasurable reading."---Steve Gump, Journal of Scholarly Publishing --- "This book will be valuable for any writers—not only academics—who wish to experience more pleasure in their writing. Sword's engaging and personable writing style makes the book a pleasure to read." --- "A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year"

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    Illustrations

    ix
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    Preface: The Mosaic Mirror

    xiii
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    Introduction: Writing with Pleasure

    1
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  • Part One: The SPACE of Writing
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    Introduction

    23
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    1 Society and Solitude: Social Principles

    25
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    2 Body Basics: Physical Principles

    44
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    3 On Beauty: Aesthetic Principles

    64
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    4 The C-Curve: Creative Principles

    83
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    5 States of Mind: Emotional Principles

    103
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  • Part Two: The SPACE of Pleasure
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    Introduction

    129
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    6 On the Ground: Analog Tools

    131
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    7 In the Sky: Digital Tools

    152
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    8 Wind, River, Stone: Processes

    170
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    9 Star Navigation: Identities

    191
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    10 Island Time: Balance

    210
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    Conclusion: Making SPACE

    229
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    Afterword: The Road Ahead

    249
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    Behind the Mirror

    257
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    Reading Notes

    265
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    Bibliography

    285
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    Index

    303
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
February 6, 2023
eBook ISBN:
9780691229416
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691229416
eBook ISBN: 9780691229416
Keywords for this book
Writing with Pleasure; helen sword; Selina Tusitala Marsh; essential guide; professional writing; learning how to write; how to write; personal writing; skills for scholars; princeton university press; creative writing; compelling narratives; scholarly article; an administrative email; a love letter; illustrated by prizewinning graphic memoirist; WriteSPACE; pleasurable writing; creatively challenging; research-based principles; hands-on strategies; writing prompts; writing skills; learn to write; make writing fun; how to make writing fun; creative space; be a better writer; books about writing
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
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