In this short article, I explore whether academic writing is an art. In the popular domain, the word academic is often shadowed by undercurrents of pejorative or even overly inflated connotations regarding its use as an adjective or even what it is to be an academic working in an institution or independently.
We may have often heard it said that an idea or an argument is simply academic. In other words, the implication is that the argument has no tangible sense but exists within the lofty domains of intellectual speculation and theory. Indeed, academic writing often falls short of being appreciated as a creative discipline in its own right and, therefore, often falls outside of recognition within the popular categories of writing.
With this in mind, I aim to dispel a view that may exist, albeit tacitly in writing communities, that academics may not be writers in the true sense of the word. Anyone who has looked at a blank page with 90,000 words to write may beg to differ.
Regarding the proposition that academic writing may not be held in the same esteem as other forms of writing, consider the following question: what comes to mind when we think of writing? Creative writing? Fiction? Famous novelists? Playwrights? Poets? Literary giants such as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett? Journalism? While we may think of all of the above categories, less so do we consider academics or those involved in research as writers.
Within this genre of more factually orientated writing, we can think of historians, biographers, economists, and scientists who have made their work known to the public through publications and books. I hasten to state that the better the writing, the better the message is received and comprehended by its audience.
With all this being said, an epistemic question arises regarding the nature of what it means to be a writer at all. Am I a writer if my work has been recognised or if I have been published and read by anyone?
I will not answer this philosophical question here; suffice it to say that one of the qualities that may distinguish a writer from a non-writer may simply be that of self-identification. For example, not all working academics write articles or books for publication and not all academics may describe themselves as writers. However, there is a vast number who do and whose writing may feature in the factual or research-orientated domain of their speciality and beyond, or their academic/scholarly career may overlap with other forms of writing.
Let there be no mistake, though; academic writing is both a skill and an outlet, a Trojan horse for the creative mind, and a means to disseminate important information and research within a given field.
In any academic domain, writing involves creativity and the ability to formulate coherent structures within language – to convey ideas in a way that can be understood and/or even enjoyed by the reader. It must be said that specific fields lend themselves more to creative explanation and interpretation, such as the humanities versus science/engineering disciplines. Furthermore, we could crudely differentiate between the what of writing (as the subject matter) and the how (style, accuracy, confidence, clarity) within academic writing.
Admittedly, when writing academically, one must adhere to stylistic guidelines, which can feel very restrictive to the more ebullient writer. This may be one reason that academics who are more focused on a writing career may opt to write books for a general audience. In this way, a writer may not need to reference so extensively or, back up every factual statement with sources in the bibliography or pay as much attention to the acknowledgement and embedding of the ideas of others.
In writing fiction or more general non/fiction such as memoirs, the author has more licence and freedom to write poetically and break stylistic conventions than within the academic field. While the genres are different, and styles may be more restrictive in the academic realm, creativity is necessary for all writing and constructions of narrative, be it fictional or factual. In fact, the line between fictional and factual is more porous than it would seem, but again, that is a question for another day.