Writing Book as Writing Mentor: Reviewing "Every Day I Write the Book" by Amitava Kumar

Today I’m thrilled to be publishing my review of Every Day I Write the Book by scholar and creative writer Amitava Kumar. Everyday I Write the Book is a text about academic writing for academic writers, which isn’t to say you need to be an academic writer to read the book. Since Kumar is an academic and creative writer this book really speaks to both audiences, with an emphasis on the academic audience. Speaking from experience, I’ve used countless books written by creative writers to improve my writing, and I think the reverse works as well, so without further ado, here is why I find this book to be such a valuable resource as a writer and as a scholar.

Every Day I Write the Book is explicitly written to be the academic version of Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life and Stephen King’s On Writing, the latter being something of a Bible for creative writers. In broad terms, what all three books have in common is that they are a cross between memoir and reflections on writing. Thus, the writing advice is grounded in personal experience and expression. This isn’t an instructional manual for academic writing in the style of Wendy Belcher’s How to Write a Journal Article in Twelve Weeks, (note on the cover “A Report” is playfully crossed out). The comparison to Dillard and King is far more apt. If you’re in search of the concrete this book will frustrate you (though, to be honest, if you’re looking for the concrete in writing instruction most books and blogs will likely frustrate you. However, if you’re looking for a writing companion, a book that offers commiseration regarding the challenges of writing: the loneliness, the uncertainty, the struggle to find the right words or frankly any words whatsoever, this is a book to add to your collection.

I would put this book in the category of writing lifestyle more than genre guidebook. It’s not going to tell you how to follow the formula of academic writing. Instead the book offers daily encouragement toward finding the writing and academic lifestyle that works for you. To this end, Kumar offers his own life as an example and conducts interviews with other creative and scholarly writers to offer insight into the genre and process.

In my opinion, it’s good to study as many examples as possible as you advance in your own writing journey. So, let’s dig into the benefits of this particular writing book and why you should consider adding it to your collection (anyone else have a shelf full of books on writing?).

If I were to judge by the synopsis on the back of Every Day I Write the Book, I would assume the book is largely a writing how to. However, as I delved deeper into the book, I began to realize that on a deeper level, the book is a thoughtful provocation and critique of academic writing norms. For that reason I would say where students may choose to add this book to their collection, senior academics have an obligation to read and grapple with Kumar’s critique.

Reflecting on a wide array of writing practices, industries that surround and profit off of academic writing, (journals and accountability coaching), what writing is rewarded, and consistently returning to the subject of race and academia, this book challenges readers inside the Ivory Tower to confront the practices that are often uncritically reproduced within the academy.

As an independent scholar I found, especially toward the end of the book, a lot of catharsis in Kumar’s challenge to the academy. I imagine many graduate students will feel something similar. For new tenure track academics this book could be the reminder you need to stay true to yourself and your voice. There is a chapter Kumar writes about the inspiration he finds in talking to his younger colleagues, who are blazing the trail in being on the tenure track but not capitulating to its structural pressures for conformity. For older faculty I think the provocation is, what can you do for the next generation to recognize that the academic world has changed and so must its conventions?

The book may at times feel like a direct attack, and it may be tempting to toss it away. But, I think for the reader who sits in their own discomfort as Kumar interrogates a formidable range of academic writing topics, the rewards will be well worth the challenges. It undoubtedly lends itself to being reread and is well worth owning a copy.

One of my favorite ways to begin a writing session, especially if I’m feeling intimidated by that writing session, is to start with a little bit of reading about writing, and Every Day I Write the Book is perfectly set up for this type of reading. There are a handful of longer chapters in the book, but the majority of chapters tend to be no more than two pages at most. Some chapters are a paragraph or perhaps just a sentence. I think the benefit of this, to writers, is that Every Day I Write the Book promises to be a companion that fits itself to the time constraints and needs of the day. Only have a few minutes? Flip to “On Training,” “But Life,” or “Not Writing” for some ideas on how to get started in only a handful of lines.

Following philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, the book structure could be called “rhizomatic,” which is to say, the book doesn’t need to be read from beginning to end. You can flip to any chapter that seems suited to what you need that day and read it in the order you need rather than the order of the pages. That is one of the things I’ve enjoyed about the book. It is more a writing buddy than an instruction manual, and its structure reflects that. When I need inspiration I know I can flip to a brief chapter on writing rituals, and when I’m looking for something longer to sit with, the book provides longer chapters as well.

“You are probably going to think I’m out of my mind, but I recommend that if you aren’t writing, you should nevertheless perform the ritual of sitting down to write about what you are not writing” from Every Day I Write the Book.

There are two chapters on ritual in this text, both of which I enjoyed immensely. In fact, I turn to them almost every time I open the book.

I realized, reading Kumar, I have a reverential relationship with my morning pour over. Every morning, before I begin writing, I go to the kitchen, weigh out my medium roast coffee, preferably Ethiopian single origin. I hand grind the beans. Only once I have my 280 grams of coffee in my mug, do I begin my academic writing. That first morning coffee is my favorite part of the day, not only because of the coffee, but because it is a period that is solely devoted to writing and research. I don’t think about emails, the job market, the haunting dearth of academic jobs. I just enjoy the peace of reading, writing, drinking my coffee, and moving my light sensitive plants out of the sun as it moves across the apartment.

Kumar recommends writing rituals, and as you can see in the above quote, observing them even when you think you have nothing to say. It’s about normalizing making time for your writing. The chapter on “Not Writing” and the importance of ritual is my favorite in the book perhaps because I find so much pleasure in my own writing rituals.

Representation matters. One of the key things it’s important to talk about, in relation to Every Day I Write the Book, is representation. Studies have shown that when scholars of color enter the academy they open up pathways for the next generation of scholars of color because they are often more attentive to representation and the way it matters. Every Day I Write the Book is a great illustration of this. Not only does Kumar repeatedly turn to race throughout his text, he cites an array of scholars ranging from trans scholars, queer scholars, international scholars, WOC scholars, differently-abled scholars, and he doesn’t bury those references. Kumar’ s book is explicit about the materiality of bodies in the academy.

This is one of the key ways Kumar’s book stands out from the crowd. Oftentimes, books by white scholars fail to address the challenges of inequality. And it isn’t as if these challenges haven’t been researched and documented. Women scholars are routinely asked to do more service work (Guarino and Borden 2016). Many scholars who belong to underrepresented groups routinely express exhaustion with the number of committees they are asked to serve on. And peer review and publishing have come under scrutiny for the ways journals evaluate female scholarship more aggressively than male scholarship (Helmer, Schottdorf, Nee, and Battaglia). There is a therapeutic quality to the way Kumar weaves inequity into his writing on writing that asks readers to think about the material challenges of scholarship. “Tenure File” is a real punch in the gut on this subject.

“Since I had several years before supplied all the permissions, I grew tired of our little back and forth, stimulating though it had become, and rescinded my acceptance of your re-acceptance… Since I no longer had a stake in feverishly publishing my feeble pensées in poorly-run academic journals, I thought no more of the matter, until today.” An anonymous letter from Every Day I Write the Book.

This letter made me laugh out loud. I also think it’s emblematic of the way Kumar weaves critiques of the academic production machine throughout his book. This critique provides vital insight into another element of academic writing, what we call “publish or perish,” or the ever increasing pressure to publish more peer-reviewed work in spite of the low impact of that work. So much of academic writing and stress about academic writing revolves around the out of control pressure to publish peer-reviewed work for a small coterie of scholars. Reading one former academic state what was on their mind was cathartic, and a small reminder that as I am not on the tenure track, why live in the shadow of publish or perish? These critiques, peppered throughout the book, are a strong reminder to readers that academic productivity isn’t a transparent matter of just getting the writing done. There are real barriers and problems that we’re all confronting on an hourly basis.

There are a handful of books that serve as writing bibles. Most people are told to get a copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style or to give Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, a try. I, myself, received a copy of the former from my mom and a copy of the latter from my first-year college roommate’s well meaning mother, who was a novelist and who kindly mentored eighteen to nineteen year old me and nurtured my own dreams of one day being a novelist. I no longer want to be a novelist, but I will say that background in writing and writing guides means I’m familiar with most of the writing guides and writing advice out there, but for the writer just launching into the wide world of writing advice, Every Day I Write the Book offers that mentorship that I happened to receive from live people. Namely, reviews and reflections on popular writing guides.

The section on “Style” is where you’ll find many of these reviews, though they are scattered throughout. There are reflections on how intimidating reading masters of prose like Marcel Proust can be. A Chapter on Strunk and White reminds us that this is one of the definitive writer’s guides, as well as what the main takeaways might be from a guide like The Elements of Style, famous for both its emphasis on being “concise” and its own brevity. Kumar tackles the paternalistic Stanley Fish, who wrote the book “How to Write a Sentence.” Kumar carefully guides readers through noted books on writing while reminding us these books may have biases, that we shouldn’t worship at the alter of writers proclaiming they have the failsafe rules to writing.

In hindsight I was lucky to have as much guidance as I had on finding writing advice, but Every Day I Write the Book offers to take some of the guesswork out and give anyone that mentorship so you don’t have to wait for your roommate’s mom to be a novelist.

“The authors of the books I like have this fact in common: they had a good idea for a book, yes, but what they had really succeeded at doing was figuring out the book’s form.” From Every Day I Write the Book.

In my reflections last week I discussed how this book functions as a mentor. 

This phrase took me back to the professionalization course I took with Professor Raiford Guins at Stony Brook University, during my Ph.D. That course may have been the most influential course I took in terms of establishing who I am as an academic writer. It began with a slender book, a cultural studies monograph on the history and nature of golf balls. Ray chose this book for its form. It consisted of two parts made up of nine chapters each, totaling eighteen chapters, a not so subtle nod to the form of golf-courses with their eighteen holes. That semester every book we read was a provocation to think about form and to be creative. Ray is, without a doubt, one of the most stylish academic writers I know, and he writes prose in forceful, declarative sentences that command attention. He’s also eccentrically passionate, and every graduate student deserves a professor who brings that level of passion to their teaching and mentorship. It doesn’t always work out like that, but as I read Kumar’s book I was struck by the way a good book often steps up to the plate to fill in the gaps left by busy professors, perhaps too overwhelmed by their staggering amount of responsibilities to think about style and form. Presentation, is little talked about but a vital part of the impression we leave on an audience. These lines are an important reminder not to forget that a work of academic writing is a piece of knowledge, yes, but its impact is increased by being given the right structure to support that knowledge and make it memorable.

Scattered generously throughout Every Day I Write the Book are images from Kumar’s writing life. A joking rewriting of a sign in the first chapter titled “Misery,” itself a commiserating way to open a book. Do we ever crack open books on writing for any reason besides to relieve ourselves of the sense of misery and dread that comes from struggling with writing? And the hope of elation that comes with writing freely? Well, Kumar rightfully predicts where many of us probably are when we turn to the genre of the writing guide, which is mired. The first section is called “Self-Help.” Images consist of writing life ephemera, a screenshot of a tweet here, a newspaper cutout there, a handwritten fragment from another writer, all reminding us that writing is a material practice and that we are essentially magpies collecting clues on the way to writing our own works.

In this book you’ll encounter common writing tactics. Pomodoro time-management, try incorporate exercise into your writing routine, confine yourself to a single post-it note. Don’t compare yourself to writers you strongly admire and “read junk”—if you want an example of bad writing (which I do find educational) Regina’s Song is the absolute worst novel I have, personally, ever read, and it will teach you the difference between showing and telling by persistently telling.

Finally, know that many have struggled with the inequities of the academy and you are not alone if you feel alienated and abandoned “In the groves of academe,” as this book will remind you.

So, those are my reflections on Amitava Kumar’s Every Day I Write the Book. Tell me in the comments, what is your favorite book on writing and why?