In this week’s episode of the Love, Academic Writing podcast, the Love Doctors, Allison and Lee, talk about this week’s writing but: BUT WRITER’S BLOCK!

Click here to get your buts therapized for free on the podcast! 

Lee takes you through their latest bout of so-called block (turns out, it was just a bunch of excuses!) and some strategies for getting unblocked:

1. not beating the shit out of yourself for not writing

2. celebrating the small wins, and

3. creating minimum baselines. So minimum you can't not meet them. 

Plz plz plz rate and review the show so that other writers can find it! The struggle is real.

Connect with Allison @postphdtheblog or at allisonharbin.com

Connect with Lee @rhetoriclee or leempierce.com

In the inaugural episode of the Love, Academic Writing podcast, the Love Doctors, Allison and Lee, talk about this week’s writing but: BUT WRITER’S BLOCK!

Click here to get your buts therapized for free on the podcast! 

Plz plz plz rate and review the show so that other writers can find it! The struggle is real.

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” ~James Baldwin

Plz plz plz rate and review the show so that other writers can find it! The struggle is real.

Is writer’s block real? What exactly is the “block”? Did you put it there or did someone else? Is the block depression, in which case maybe you need a break. Or is it just that you aren’t sure of your argument, in which case you need to write. Are you in Jesus’s cave or Plato’s? If you asked Eve Sedgwick or Audre Lorde if they had writer’s block while they were dying of cancer they probably would have said, “I have writer’s block all the time, that’s the whole reason I write.”

When you’re thinking (or bitching to someone else), that you have writer’s block, think about what you actually mean: 

• I don’t know what I’m trying to say
• This essay is a mess
• I’m never going to figure this out
• Nobody cares about this
• I don’t have enough theory. 

Connect with Allison @postphdtheblog or at allisonharbin.com

Connect with Lee @rhetoriclee or leempierce.com

Get ready for the Love Academic Writing (and hopefully other kinds of writing too) podcast! Hosted by Dr. Lee Pierce, assistant professor and rhetorical scholar, and Dr. Allison Harbin, academic-exile, freelance writer, blogger, and dev editor. Together, they are the Love Writing Doctors! (It’s funny because they ARE doctors). They are here to help you stop whining and start writing…through a LOT of bitching.

Click here to get your buts therapized for free on the podcast! 

Each episode tackles a different writing excuse. But I don’t have time. But all the emailz. But neoliberalism. Some of them are entitled bullshit. And some of them are for real, like, “but my depression” and “but black mold in my apartment.” We’ll cover them all…eventually…

Plz plz plz rate and review the show so that other writers can find it! The struggle is real.

Whether you’re an academic exile freelancing Ph.D. or a tenure track faculty at a cutthroat R1, if you need to get more words on the page, this is the podcast for you. So hit subscribe and look for the first episodes coming your way in late summer 2022.

In the meantime, you can connect with us on social media. You can even sign up now to get your writing buts therapized for free. Therapy for yer butts. It’s all in the show notes. 

Connect with Allison @postphdtheblog or at allisonharbin.com

Connect with Lee @rhetoriclee or leempierce.com

Read the blog version: 

*Have thoughts? Hit me up on social media or at rhetoriclee@gmail.com

Takeaways:

Jargon, sometimes called buzzwords, sometimes called slang, sometimes called bureaucratese, is basically non-standard language meant to bring into being non-standard thought. Jargon is inclusive and expands our collective understanding of the world when it is used carefully, defined, in tons of examples, and solves a problem by bringing a different awareness than other words in its orbit. However, jargon is exclusive and narrows our collective understanding of the world when it is used in piles and lists (a rhetorical device known as amplificatio or sometimes enumeratio), when jargon is defined by referring to other jargon when it is only supported by one or two perfect examples and doesn’t seem to solve a problem by bringing more awareness than other words in its orbit.

Exemplar is a word for the model of the model, the most perfect example, the “for instance” that makes the theory work perfectly. If you’re using exemplars to illustrate your jargon then you’re making that jargon inaccessible by not letting it come into contact with the real world, which is messy and complex. The name of Brown’s exemplar is Suzanne (you’re going to be hearing a lot about Suzanne today).

Piling up jargon is great for creating brand followers and cult-like acolytes and people who will buy everything that comes out of your mouth and whose lives are exactly like yours. It also sells a lot of certified leadership coaching problems because it puts strategies for improvement out of reach, behind a wall of concepts and terminology and jargon, and requires we pay someone else to walk us through our own minds and lives. (FYI one of the first sentences out of Brown’s mouth in this episode is about her thousands of certified “Dared to Lead” trainers)

Read the blog post:

Resources used in this episode:

• Brené on Armored versus Daring Leadership, Part 1 of 2 | Brené Brown
• Brene Brown Advice - How to Be Yourself

Read the blog version: https://rhetoriclee.com/jargon-exemplars-and-brene-brown/

*Learn more at https://rhetoriclee.com 

*Follow the show  on Facebook and on Instagram @rhetoriclee 

*Subscribe to the show on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, on Google Podcasts, on Stitcher, on Youtube, on Spotify, or via RSS

*Take 20 seconds to leave a short review and 5 star-rating (I’ll even take 4 stars, I’m not greedy). Reviews help future #rhetoricnerds find the show!

*Have thoughts? Hit me up on social media or at rhetoriclee@gmail.com

This episode is a reading of a recent piece by Amanda Montell for Sunday Edit titled "Language Lowdown: Why Phrases Like "I Feel Like" and "If That Makes Sense" Aren't Actually Bad." Montell's piece discusses patriarchal language standards and the importance of critiquing our norms for "authoritative speech" and it features my two cents about language as something we want to use intentionally not necessarily "correctly" (because standards for correctness are caught up in all kinds of sexism, ableism, racism, colorism, classism, etc.)

Read the piece at https://edit.sundayriley.com/language-lowdown-why-phrases-like-i-feel-like-and-if-that-makes-sense-arent-actually-bad/

*Learn more at https://rhetoriclee.com 

*Follow the show  on Facebook and on Instagram @rhetoriclee 

*Subscribe to the show on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, on Google Podcasts, on Stitcher, on Youtube, on Spotify, or via RSS

*Take 20 seconds to leave a short review and 5 star-rating (I’ll even take 4 stars, I’m not greedy). Reviews help future #rhetoricnerds find the show!

*Have thoughts? Hit me up on social media or Gmail @rhetoriclee

The problem with phrasing the rules or norms or whatever you want to call them around the word n-i** as a prohibition, as a thou shalt not, is that not only does it NOT address the more implicit racism of feeling entitled to say the word when there’s no one around “to be offended,” but it also begs the very people to transgress that you’re trying to get to stop transgressing because most people--especially people who fancy themselves edgy intellectuals or truth tellers or the last stalwarts of free speech against woke liberal scolds--when they hear a prohibition, their first instinct is to violate it.

Resources from this episode:

• Ice Cube and Symone Sanders on White Privilege | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
• The Idea That Whites Can’t Refer to the N-Word
• Female Comics Sound Off on Kevin Hart, Louis C.K. and Comedy in the Age of Trump
• STATEMENT of THE DRAMMEH INSTITUTE REGIONAL MEETING FOR EUROPE, CENTRAL ASIA AND NORTH AMERICA ON THE INTERNATIONAL DECADE FOR PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT 
• Chris Rock Has No Time for Your Ignorance (Published 1997)
• http://www.drammehinstitute.org/about.html

Read the blog version: https://rhetoriclee.com/linguistic-reparations-or-why-i-dont-say-ni/

*Learn more at https://rhetoriclee.com 

*Follow the show  on Facebook and on Instagram @rhetoriclee 

*Subscribe to the show on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, on Google Podcasts, on Stitcher, on Youtube, on Spotify, or via RSS

*Take 20 seconds to leave a short review and 5 star-rating (I’ll even take 4 stars, I’m not greedy). Reviews help future #rhetoricnerds find the show!

*Have thoughts? Hit me up on social media or Gmail @rhetoriclee