Writing as … metaphors for loving writing

Writing as trance, meditation, escape, therapy, creativity, solace

By Claire Aitchison

Doctoral scholars, their supervisors and academics in general, all have intimate relations with writing. It’s our everyday world. Like any intimate relationship, this liaison has its ups and downs: there are times of love and hate, joy and bitterness, times when we resent writing and other times when it brings us comfort and delight. Who hasn’t known what it’s like to fight and wrangle with writing late at night, exhausted, and wishing to cut the ties and run away forever?!

In this post – at the end of Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) – I use metaphors to explore some of my relationships with writing.

Writing as tranceWriting can put me into a trance-like state so that I am totally unaware of the rest of the world. When I am deep in writing I am in an altered frame of mind, detached from time and…