Michael Potts's Blog: Bits and Pieces: Book Reviews and Articles on Writing, Horror Fiction, and Some Philosophy - Posts Tagged "academic-writing"

There is a cliche that academic writing has to be boring. While literary essays may be beautifully written, an article in a peer-reviewed academic journal or an academic monograph has to read like wood. This is not the case, although some academics write in a way that makes the cliche seem accurate.

I have always tried to write clearly in my academic articles--I am not a fan of the school of thought that says, "The more obscure, the better." While academic writing involves a different skill set than creative writing, I have found that having skills in both forms of writing helps me in whatever genre I write.

Academic writing involves precision, especially in my field, philosophy, which demands careful reasoning and attention to evidence. Good philosophy involves good facts, and a failure of accuracy can be fatal to a philosophical work. Creative writing skills help me to communicate difficult philosophical issues in a concrete, rather than an abstract, way. Attention to detail that focuses on the concrete items in the world, and that focuses on the everyday experience and struggles of students can help communicate difficult concepts. I could not have written my latest book, *Aerobics for the Mind: Practical Exercises in Philosophy that Anybody Can Do*, without creative writing skills to bring philosophy down to earth. I wanted to make philosophy come alive to the reader, as Shelby Foote made the War between the States come alive in his narrative history of the war.

My advice to academics who also engage in creative writing is to think of the relationship between the two forms of writing as symbiotic. Hopefully, academics who write novels, poetry, and literary essays can improve their skills in all areas of writing by recognizing and using that fact to their advantage.