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Getting it write
Is frustration the essence
of good writing?
By Wade Zaglas
E
veryone in academia can empathise
with that feeling of frustration
that accompanies lengthy writing
tasks, such as theses, journal chapters
and edited books. Words, phrases and
syntactical choices are pored over;
paragraphs are experimented with, adapted
and sometimes cast away; and whole
sections are worked and reworked until
there emerges a coherent and beautifully
crafted piece fit for the most erudite and
discerning of audiences. Given the level
of attention and mental acuity required
when writing academically, it’s perhaps not
surprising that frustration is felt regularly.
But what is frustration and how often is it
felt by academic writers? How is it realised
and is there a cure? Most importantly, is it
essential to academic writing or a useless
emotion that gets in the way?
These are some of the questions guiding
one of the “engaging, well-written articles”
shortlisted for the Higher Education and
Research Development Journal Article
of the Year. Written by Helen Sword,
Evija Trofimova and Madeleine Ballard,
‘Frustrated academic writers’ begins with a
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familiar scenario for those in academia:
“You were supposed to have the article
finished two months ago. But one of
your co-authors has been ill, and other
commitments have jostled their way into
spaces reserved for writing: an overdue
book review, an emergency staffing
meeting. Your master’s student has just
sent you her fifth draft; your partner called
to say the roof is leaking. Still, here you are
at last, seated in front of your computer on
a rainy Friday afternoon, ready to take on
that recalcitrant introductory section.”
‘Recalcitrant’ is an apt word to describe
academic writing endeavours. Crafting
dense, well-researched and cohesive
sections of an article is a tricky – even
slippery – task; it’s a tiring and at times
frustrating experience that reflects the
difficulty in bridging the (sometimes
fleeting) ideas in one’s mind with the
written word. Indeed, according to the
authors of the article, frustration is, by
far, the most common emotion felt by
academic writers.
Some of the questionnaire responses
below highlight how intimately bound
frustration and academic writing are:
• Frustration when I don’t get time
for [writing].
• Frustrated … [that I] can’t seem to find the
right words.
• Bit of frustration – why can’t I write things
faster? How hard can it be?
• I often go through periods of
frustration (anger!)
• When I don’t respect my planning,
I get frustrated.
• Frustration [that as] a non-native speaker
I feel … limited in my vocabulary.
But what is frustration? And do academic
writers need it? The authors of the study
contend that neuroscience can offer us
some clues, providing relief for “tormented
writers”. They argue frustration is hard-
wired into a reward-seeking system that
is mammalian.
“Mammals and humans alike feel
arousal in anticipation of their reward, an
addictive and pleasurable feeling that can
be self-stimulated,” they say. “Perhaps,
when we start to write, we anticipate the
reward (a finished chapter, an academic
publication) too soon or too much?”
The article then argues that language
is “frustration exemplified: a shifting yet
intractable barrier between our ideas and
our expression of them, between where
we are and where want to go”.
To sum up the difficulty in academic
writing and why it’s often accompanied
by feelings of frustration, the authors
construct the act of writing as a maze, a
“multicursal structure” full of “false leads,
wrong turns and dead ends” in the pursuit
of a reward. ■