With a new year comes new resolutions, and for many, these resolutions inevitably involve writing. There are so many books about how to be a better writer, but none quite like this one. Becoming the Writer You Already Are is a new book by Michelle R. Boyd, who you may know from her Inkwell academic writing retreats.This book actually grapples with the emotions underlying the writing process, and, importantly, recognizes that the blocks we face are often not our fault. Instead it acknowledges what we talk about on this podcast all the time, which is that the institutions of academia do a whole lot to make things really hard for you to do your work.

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I'm Dr. Ethel Tungohan, an Associate Professor of Politics at York University. This is Academic Aunties.

Happy New Year! With a New Year comes new resolutions, and for many academics, these resolutions inevitably involve writing. So many of us have seemingly insurmountable roadblocks when it comes to writing, and so we feel the need to make a declaration at the very start of the year to be a better writer.

But what does being a better writer entail? There are a lot of books out there promising to help academics write more effectively, with books promising to help us dissertate, to help us write peer review journal articles, and to help us with writing hacks. I've read these books too, and I've found some of them useful.

For a period of time, I would write for 30 minutes a day in the morning and log how many words I wrote on a shared Excel spreadsheet with my friends. And that did help me meet some of my deadlines. But what's missing from these books is that they don't actually grapple with the emotions underlying the writing process.

They seek to change your practices even when doing so seems counter to how we work. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about a new book about writing that does the exact. Becoming the Writer You Already Are is a new book by Michelle R. Boyd, who you may know from her Inkwell academic writing retreats.

In her book, she helps readers go from stuck to unstuck by drawing on the skills that they already have. And what I love about this book is that it doesn't try to blame you. In fact, it acknowledges what we talk about on this podcast all the time, which is that the institutions of academia do a whole lot to make things really hard for you to do your work.

So who better to talk about this great book than the author herself? Michelle, welcome to Academic Aunties.

Hi Ethel, and thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

I'm so excited to talk to you because let me tell you, listeners. Becoming the Writer You Already Are. I sped through it. Initially I thought, oh, a writing book, right? . But then I read it and I actually was super inspired, and as I was telling Michelle before we started recording, I truly appreciated how this book was subversive.

And we'll talk a little bit more about. we think, or why I think this book is subversive. So Michelle, my very first question, uh, to you is, you know, I know you from your amazing Inkwell Academic writing Retreats, and what I really love about the space is the non-judgmental and generative and really kind way you encourage scholars to write.

So what motivated you to become a writing coach and to start Inkwell and what led you to write this

book?

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate that. I'm glad that that's how the retreats feel, because that's how I want them to feel. So first, uh, what led me to become a writing coach, it was not something I had planned. I was, uh, a professor and had a wonderful job and I was tenured and I had amazing colleagues.

And I also realized after I got tenure and had a chance to actually just sit and think, what do I really wanna be doing with my time? It was becoming clearer and clearer to me. , even though I was successful from, you know, all of the measures that we use to assess a scholar's career, this was not what I wanted to be doing.

So I started doing some administrative work and my university, and one of the things that we did, this wasn't even my idea, was we began leading writing retreats for graduate students of color, and I was hooked. We needed someone to provide some coaching each day to each student, and when I first started, I would do it individually.

And, you know, I had been, since I finished, since I'd gotten tenure, I had been reading a lot about writing process, about the craft of writing for my own interests because I was trying to figure out how can I pair that love with whatever my next project is gonna be. How can I really invest the craft of writing into what I'm doing?

So I volunteered to coach and I realized, oh gosh, I love doing this. And I'm really good at it. Which was not something I'd realized. And you know, students just kept coming back and coming back and coming back and we would sell out in an hour and I realized, oh wow, this is a thing. You know, this retreat thing, there's something that happens in a retreat that's different.

So that, that was how that happened. I sort of put together a little, you know, a five year plan, maybe I'll do this on the side while I'm still a professor. Um, and then my husband got a job offer on the west coast and all of a sudden I sort of had to decide, am I gonna stay here and, you know, stay with this job?

Or am I gonna actually put the five year plan in place in five months? And so , I opted for five months. So it was not planned. You know, I didn't, I hadn't, I had no interest in starting my own business when I, you know, became a professor, but it just sort of blossomed.

That's awesome. And so how, so you, you've done a lot of successful writing retreats. As I said, I've gone to your Inkwell online writing retreats. A few of my friends were there and we found it really generative and really supportive and that was great. And so how do you go from the retreats and the writing coaching to the book?

Like how did the book come about?

So that also was not purposeful. I actually got the contract for that book when I was still a professor. And so I, because I hadn't been planning this, of course, I was sort of looking around for my next project, as I said, right. And I was really interested in writing. I was interested also in, I had started doing audio ethnography where I tried to use audio producing as a way to communicate complicated ideas about scholarship.

And because I was an ethnographer, that's what I was interested in. So I had all these interests that didn't fit. You know, they felt like they were on the wrong side of the creative versus scholar divide, and so I was just looking for a way to incorporate them. So I'd written an article that was the basis for the book.

I'd written it, I don't know, I think it came out in 2012. And an editor approached me and she said, are you writing a book about this? Which I was not. And I said, of course I am. You know cause right. I mean an editor comes to you and that's what you do. And so, you know, it was enough in line with what I was really trying to figure out that I accepted the contract and then made this huge decision to leave my job behind, which is why part of the reason why the book took so long to write.

So we, you know, as we were saying beforehand, this wasn't something where I made a decision, popped it off in a couple years. It took forever because I completely changed my life. I had to learn how to run a business, um, all while I was trying to work on this book so...

Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, I think it's a gift to the world. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and one thing I really appreciated about the book was you didn't present kind of a one size fit all solution to to writers. Right. Um, that's one thing. Another thing I really adored about this book is how you basically gave writers permission to just feel their emotions.

Right? And I've never, ever, in all of the writing books I've read, had someone acknowledge that. So just kind of thinking about this, what made you decide to highlight the emotive? Why was that an important intervention?

That is such a great question. I, I think the first thing that happened was I developed this idea of the writing metaphor. And honestly, that's not the right way to say that. Writing metaphors are not a new idea, right? I didn't make that up. And in fact, creative writers think about this all the time. Have been thinking about it for a long time.

But I stumbled onto the idea of a writing metaphor when I was writing that first article, which was really designed to help me figure out how long does it take me to write an article. And as I was doing that, I sort of realized, okay, I need to figure out, well, what are the, what are the stages of writing an article and, and came to think about that by developing a metaphor in my head that just happened. So that's what I wrote about in the article. And when I first started teaching that material, once I had started Inkwell, one of the things that would happen was that I would realize that first of all, people would get very emotional when they would do the, the exercise.

And at that time I was leading writing. When I first began leading the writing retreats, I would coach each scholar individually every day of the retreat , which was, was an enormous amount of work. And I also did this because my experience at that time taught me that people were really ashamed of what was happening with their writing.

Yes.

And I felt that as a coach, it was my responsibility to give them space that felt safe where they could talk to me, and I thought that that needed to be an individual conversation. So I was just hearing this over and over again and I had felt that myself and still feel it now, and was feeling it at the time when I was writing the book.

My own sense of doubt and shame and worry and just panic. I mean all the things. So I was feeling these things. I was talking with other people who were feeling these. And it just became clear that the metaphor, as I had talked about it in the article was great, but it fell a little short that there was this other dimension about how we actually feel that was, I don't wanna say really the problem because there are a lot of challenges, but it was one that wasn't getting any attention in the literature at the time. You can see it's not a straightforward path, right? It's not that I had an intellectual interest in emotions, it was that my own personal experience and my experience as a coach was showing me that this mattered.

And there was a fair amount of literature talking about this that was, you know, actual scholarship on writing that was also acknowledging it to a certain degree and it was, it was almost like something I couldn't even, even if I'd wanted to get away from it, I couldn't, you know, it was just so there.

Absolutely. And one thing that absolutely resonated with me as I was reading this was, you know, I am, I am, I'm an academic. But you know, you, you, in your book, you tell people, you know, you're also a writer. You are a writer. It just kind of claimed that writer identity. Right. Which I absolutely loved. But going back to the emotional part, right.

One thing that really resonated with me was you talked about how, especially for first generation people of color, immigrants, a lot of the stakes are different and a lot of the stakes are higher, thus igniting a different emotional response for those of us who probably come from, you know, more minoritized communities.

Right? So I really adored how you kind of pointed that out, that our standpoints or lived experiences might mean that we would have a different emotional relationship to our writing compared to someone who was white cis, you know, the, the stereotypical male dude, bro male prof, right? do you know what I mean?

Absolutely. And you know, I appreciate you pointing that out because I, I could have written this book to be a book for people of color, right. Or I could have written a book that was about marginalized folks, and I could lead retreats that were only for women of color because the majority of people who come to my retreats are women of color.

And that's purposeful, right? I, I, I make a space for women of color academics specifically. But I don't do that. I don't name this as a challenge that's faced only by marginalized people on purpose, right? Because I very much want to be 100% clear that this, these are things that face all writers in some shape or form.

And I also wanna say, and if you come to my retreats or you do anything involved with me, you are gonna be part of a conversation that says, How we experience that differs based on where we are, right, in the social hierarchy. And if you can't have that conversation, if you can't acknowledge that, then you shouldn't really be at an Inkwell retreat. And Right.

And if you, and if you know that from personal experience, let's, let's, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it the way that a social scientist wants to talk about it, right? Like, let's examine it in the same way that we would examine this if it were happening, say to, uh, one of the communities that we work with in our research.

Let's treat it that way. Acknowledge that there's a power dynamic, and pair that with our emotional response, right? Not just be lost or tormented by the emotional response, but respect it, acknowledge it at the same time that we analyze its power dimension.

A hundred percent. Absolutely. I really loved that part of the book. Actually I love the whole book itself. And one thing I truly appreciated is the last part of the book was really powerful for me. It completely resonated. Ironically, that seemed to be the part of the book where you start by saying, oh my gosh, it's so hard for me to write about, you know, the last part of the book.

Right. You acknowledge that in the chapter, and one of the things that I love was this notion of having an oppositional consciousness.

Mm-hmm.

How did you come up with that, and what was that like in terms of kind of divising that idea to tie it all together?

Ethel, I'm gonna tell you, I was terrified to write that chapter. I was terrified to write that chapter. I was terrified to use that concept cuz I thought, oh gosh, is this concept too old? Is am I ma is it too much of a stretch? I mean, I really, and I, I'm telling you that because I know that it's a finished product and people are likely to look at this as, you know, really seamlessly woven together.

And even the parts that might be a little bumpy, you know, we look at a finished product and we sort of gloss over those things. But that chapter was really difficult for me and I, I think how that chapter came about was I, you know, I always have trouble with conclusions. I think conclusions are really hard.

They're hard.

Right? I don't even know what the heck is supposed to happen in them and, you know, and so I realized that I didn't just wanna do a summary and I had throughout the whole book to balance talking about a specific technique, kind of from my position as a coach, but also wanting to always be seeding that technique in a power context, right? And so I, I wanted to end with that. I wanted to end with possibility. I think one of the things that can happen when people go through the writing metaphor is they can sometimes feel overwhelmed. And I did not want that for people. I wanted them to. emboldened, not empowered, right?

Emboldened. I wanted there to be something that felt like a new way to think about things that gave some sort of hope. And I guess the other thing is I really wanted to address a dilemma I thought, I think I created in the book where I say, look, some of our problems are caused by the context that we're in.

Which could lead the reader to feel like, Ugh, I'm not gonna be able to handle this unless somehow I totally, you know, I spend all my time fighting against the, in the institution, but as a writer, right, and as a writing coach, that's actually not what I'm asking you to do. And so how do we reckon with an awareness of the power dimensions of our writing challenges at the same time that we stay focused on the writing itself.

And it all sort of came together in this idea of oppositional consciousness. One other thing, I love your questions cuz I haven't thought out the answers to your questions, but they're so interesting. I'm coaching the whole time I'm reading, writing this book. Right. And one of the things I keep seeing is that scholars who come and work with me are their language changes, their, their approach to things change.

And, and when I tried to grapple with what I was seeing in them, it very much reminded me of and was resonant with this idea of, of oppositional consciousness, not just a writer's identity. Cuz you can have a writer's identity that is completely compliant with the university and with demands for productivity.

Right. But what I kept seeing was people who were laying down boundaries and putting up, you know, barriers that when I first started working with them seemed impossible. And they were doing that as part of a community. So honestly, that last chapter was me trying to understand what I was seeing as a person who leads writing retreats.

What the heck is going on in these things, that they are so transformative and so powerful, even though people are only together for a week. That that was me learning what was happening with what I was doing.

Mm-hmm. For sure. And so can you speak a little bit more about the changes that you're seeing? Right. So you, so what were writers, what were folks like before, and what were they like after. You kind of hinted at that, that they're drawing more boundaries, but what was the default position in the beginning?

Various, right? So I mean, one very common simple one is I have to be constantly available to everybody all the time, and this is why I can't find time for writing, and that can look like, I have to check email first thing in the morning. You know, some things that you would hear about in any text on productivity, right?

With, and I have this with, in, with air quotes, but, but how people were talking about it, what was in expressing their inability. You know, they, it was, they were hampered by it. They were trapped by it. So I have to check my email. I have to say yes to things that I don't really wanna say yes to. It would also be, it would also look like people just being terrified to even be in the same room with their writing.

they couldn't get to their desk or they'd get to their desk and they'd run away. And you know, there are a thousand ways to run away from your writing. And, and what would happen afterwards is this, I would see this sense that it was actually okay to put themselves first in this way. I and I, and you asked me, so what happened afterwards, but I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what I would see in the middle too, right?

Which is they would struggle against it. They would want to put down a boundary. They would want to be with their writing, but they couldn't quite bring themselves to do it. And then by the end of the retreat, what I'm seeing is a drop in the level of shame that they feel. Just the realization that they're not alone. That's probably the biggest one.

Mm.

And this is one of the primary benefits of doing a retreat, is that no matter how many times I say I work with hundreds at this point, thousands of scholars, they're all saying the same thing You are.

You're not the only one until you actually get in a room with, you know, 20 or 30 other people and you see them saying the exact same thing that's in your head,

Mm-hmm.

That is a transformation that makes it possible for them to stop blaming themselves and it then it just opens up all other kinds of possibilities.

I can not check my email. I actually don't have to say yes to every service request. I can put an out and off, out of office reply on my email that says that, no, I'm not available on the weekends to tend to your needs. I mean, whatever it is, yes, I can actually say what I wanna say in this draft of my document, I might change it, clean it up, do whatever, but I am allowed to put my thoughts on the page.

It's okay that I think this and that I haven't done a hundred years of research before. I actually just put an idea down on paper. Every time I see it, even still now, it's, it's so beautiful to watch someone free themselves like

that.

I love it. I think one of the things that I loved about that last chapter too was harnessing the powers of community, right? Cuz this book also talks about the relational aspects of writing, and so can you speak a little bit more about why it's important to have a true community, not a university community that's invested in ensuring that you have higher metrics, you know, in terms of publication, but an actual kind of dissident community that can support you and nurture you?

Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that the book talks about is how writing is such a risk, right? And, and what I mean by that is writing is the activity that brings us many of the rewards of the profession, the reputation, the funding, the job. And so when we sit down to write, one of the things we are aware of is that we're doing something that's gonna have consequences.

And it happens when we're writing. It's not just an idea that we know about when we're searching job ads or something like that, right? It is something that lives with us in the moment of writing. And so one of the things that a community does is help us bear that risk to feel that risk, to know it and to do it in ways that actually support our writing and support a healthy form of writing instead of the panicked, you know, binge writing, uh, very cruel to oneself approach that we may have developed over time without really knowing that we were doing that and without really recognizing what the negative effects of that are. So it's partly just having someone else beside you to bear the risk, right? To help you see that you're not alone in bearing that risk.

And also to help you think through different ways to encounter that risk. And when you're talking about someone feeling threatened or at risk during their writing, what we need is people we trust. Certainly we need intellectual advisors, we need intellectual partner. Thought partners, but at that moment where you're just feeling terrified, what you really need is someone you trust.

So that's part of what's happening with community.

I really like that part of the book too. And I think one question I have for you in relation to that is, at one part of the book you mentioned how, uh, you're all, you were part of this writing group and then, you know, you would have deadlines, but you weren't able to meet those deadlines, and then they help you realize...

well, I'll let you tell the story. They help you realize one way that you were stuck.

Yeah, so I, this was when I was a, a junior faculty member. I think this might have been my first year in a writing group. And it was a standard, it was actually a standard writing accountability group, right? It wasn't even a group where we wrote together, and I just kept not meeting my internally imposed deadlines, and I'm sure sometimes externally imposed.

And so they said, well, why don't you, you know, figure out how long does it take you so that you can get a better sense of how much time you need to give yourself. And I tried to lay out how long things took, how long a draft took, and the first thing I realized was that I didn't know what I meant by draft, right?

Because a draft means a thousand different things. It can mean. , just that sloppy thing I put on the page. It can mean it's good enough for somebody to look at. It can mean it can actually even mean it's going to a conference, right? So what did I mean by a draft? And then once I sort of decided, okay, well this is what I mean by draft, I realized that it had all of these different elements to it that I had not anticipated, and the big one was, I didn't account for all the things you have to do at the end of an article to get it ready to go. Um, things that seem really mechanical and clerical, but they actually do require some thought like headings and subheadings, right? I mean, it's one of those things where we think, oh, I'll just do that part really quick.

But it, but it, but if you want it to be meaningful for your reader, and if you want it to do the work of guiding them through your argument, you actually have to think about it anyway. So it was in conversation with this group that I was even able to come up with this sense of, oh, this is what writing is like for me.

And I purposefully didn't wanna compare it to what it was like for other people, because I knew that if that happened, I would just, it would just make me anxious.

I'm nodding as you're talking, cuz I think one of the crucial parts of, of writing is that, you know, being in community with others, um, helps you see where your challenges are like in terms of kind of your own writing process and also in terms of working out ideas, right.

Which before, I mean ironically it was during the graduate program that I became more insular, right? That I started to shun community because the prototypical graduate school seminar wasn't about trying to figure out how to mutually strengthen or work. It was about competition.

Exactly. Exactly. It absolutely is that, and it's so funny. I mean, this is the place where we're supposed to be celebrating learning and celebrating uncertainty and the process of figuring things out. But that's exactly the opposite of what graduate school is. And so I actually don't think it's ironic at all.

I think that your experience is, at least, it's one that I've heard among many, many students. It's the one that I experienced, well, I, that's not true. I would say I became more insular with my writing, but I was very, very lucky to have a really strong community of graduate students of color when I was going through the process.

But your, your experience is, I think, if not the norm, it's quite common, right? And that's not your fault.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.

I mean, that's not you. That's the institution. That is the profession. And that's what I want people to be thinking about when they have the experience that you had, right? To know maybe, okay, this is what I'm doing, but this is not my fault.

This is because I'm someplace that isn't supporting me in the way that a scholar should be supported.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, I mean, I feel like I'm going on tangents here because I really love the book. Like one way through which graduate students haven't felt supported is in the writing of the lit review. Right. And , you know, there's this expectation, I mean, even among my students, and this is actually as a supervisor, making me rethink how I supervise students.

There's this expectation that people know how to write lit reviews. That they, that they by extension know how to write a dissertation. But we don't teach people how to do that. You just kind of shove people out and expect a final product. Right? But that doesn't happen like naturally, right?

And, and I think this is, uh, an example of one of the other things I mentioned in the book, which is tacit knowledge, right? So tacit knowledge is that knowledge, um, that things that we know without really realizing that we know them. And often what happens is we, we pick up tacit knowledge through doing, we learn by doing.

And, and you know, I wrote that portion of the book in, in a certain way, right? I talked about the ways that I had sometimes responded to graduate students because I realized that I was someone who gleaned eventually at some point, I don't even know how, what a literature review should look like, but was at great pains to be able to explain it to someone else.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

And so this is another place where this is all about the institution. Why does every graduate department not actually just have coursework on how to do a literature review, right? Not expecting the literature review in your first seminar. That's not teaching, that's not teaching, you know, so, yeah, I think it's diffi.

I, I, I guess what I'm trying to say with that is I think it could be easy. I am making a criticism of the university, right? I, I also want to acknowledge the ways that, uh, professors. , including myself in this right, who sometimes reproduce the problems with the university are doing so because we ourselves experienced them and don't have a different way to think about it, right?

And have forgotten what it is like to be a graduate student. And so I, I, I want people to be critical of the institution and aware of the position of different actors in the institution, right? And then be able to assess, do I need to be critical of that person? Or, you know, what's a different way to approach that person to get what I need.

Demonizing people is a great organizer's tactic.

Mm-hmm.

needs to be done. , but when you're in a position of relat relatively low power, you're a graduate student or a junior faculty member, you need to be aware of the power dynamic and then find a different way so that you can actually get what you need.

For sure, and I think that really came across in the book, like asking different questions, thinking reflexively about your positionality in the institution and trying to find out are there ways I can push back and waste where I can, you know, just kind of figure out my way around this cuz I can't push back.

Yeah. Yeah. And not be ashamed of that, right. To kind of recognize it. I don't want the book to make people think that if they're not, you know, you know, I tried to put this in the final chapter that maybe oppositional consciousness conceptually sounds like a great idea for an internal process, but maybe that's not something that you feel you wanna act on.

Right? 100%. Okay. The idea is here are some ideas for you to think about, swim around in, and then do with what works for you.

Absolutely, and I think giving readers the power to determine their own path was really clear in the book. Um, my final question for you, Michelle, I mean, I'm enjoying this conversation, but I do think, you know, this episode will be released right when people are devising their New Year's resolutions and even talking to my friends, you know, actually nearly all of my friends who are also profs, who are also graduate students, one of the things that people mo like frequently say is they want to be able to develop a better writing practice, they wanna write more, they wanna write more effectively. What advice would you give to those folks who are thinking about doing a better job in writing in 2023?

Lots of things. I mean, I think the first thing I would um, do is actually ask a question, which is, is it more writing that you actually need? Because the productivity frame that's used by institutions and that we have taken up as individual scholars emphasizes quantity. And often I find that with the same quantity of time, but a different quality of experience, we could get more from our writing.

So that's would be the first thing I would say is, I would ask, is more writing time what you really need? Like what do you need? Not what does it feel like someone else wants or expects from you? I think I would also suggest that rather than trying to force or discipline yourself into doing more or squeezing more in, I always recommend, uh, seduction as the alternative, you know?

And what I mean by that is trying to key into what you really love about your project, what you really love about writing. Maybe you hate your project in writing right now, but you really love being in your office cuz it's beautiful. I mean, I don't know what is that thing? Honestly, if somebody said to me right now, you know, you, you could have five hours every week where all you had to do was sit and read.

I think I'd cry from happiness. I mean, what is that thing? Right? And, and starting there actually is something that youcan rely on. It's more dependable as a, as an avenue into your writing if part of what you're finding is that it's hard for you to find the time, or you're afraid of the writing time.

And recognizing that we are, I guess this is a third thing. We are in a transition period, and transitions are really hard. They are built into the life of a scholar, into our schedule. , we often don't treat them as something that's expected, and therefore we need to plan for. Something is ending, which is this year and this semester, and then you're gonna have to ease back in.

So just recognizing it's a transition and giving yourself the time to start slowly, not be up to speed in the first, you know, week, two weeks, three weeks even. And go a little bit more, more slowly into that seduction, I think can be a more powerful way to really connect you with your writing consistently and in a way that's gonna make you wanna come back again and again.

I love these bits of advice. I really love how you kind of emphasize it's not punitive, right? Um, it's about kind of figuring out what is it that you love about your project. It's about slowly easing your way in. It's not about productivity metrics or any of that stuff, right?

Mm mm. Yeah. I mean, it can be about those things sometimes, right? But if we're talking about a sustainable practice that you wanna come back to again and again, that kind of push, that kind of discipline is great for key moments. But it, you can't, I mean, even if you've been doing it for seven, 10 years, you're gonna get to a point where you're not doing that anymore.

And these are the things you can do instead, if you're looking for a new way.

I love it. And I absolutely think that all listeners of Academic Aunties should read, Becoming the Writer You Already Are. Even the title itself, right? It's not becoming the writer you want to be, right? It's being the writer you already are.

Absolutely. I'm, yeah, absolutely. It's already in there. You, you, we all need things to help develop ourselves as writers, but there is a core there that I, I just want people to appreciate about themselves and, and learn to trust cuz it's there already.

Absolutely. What fantastic words to end on. Thank you so much, Michelle, for hanging out with us and talking to us about writing.

Thank you for having me Ethel. This is the most fun I think I've had all year. I appreciate you.

This is a book about writing that is really unlike anything else out there, and I highly recommend it. If you'd like to buy Becoming the Writer You Already Are, visit academicauntis.com/writing where you can sign up for a 30% discount on the book.

I promise you won't regret it.

And that's Academic Aunties. Follow us on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie, or on Mastodon at AcademicAunties@mas.to. And drop us an email at podcast@academicaunties.com.

If you like what you're hearing, visit academicaunties.com/support to find out how to support this podcast. This includes becoming a Patreon supporter, which goes right into supporting our production costs.

Today's episode of Academic Aunties was hosted by me, Dr. Ethel Tungohan, and produced by myself, Wayne Chu and Dr. Nisha Nath. Tune in next time when we talk to more academic aunties.

Until then, take care. Be kind to yourself and don't be an asshole.