Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write

Need some encouragement? Some inspiration? Practical suggestions? This is a good book for all that. Plus, I think you'll find it to be a fun read. I flew through it on Kindle. Now I'm thinking of getting it in print so I can share it with a colleague or two.

I loved reading a helpful text on academic writing that didn't leave me feeling guilty! I've read through, and am now dipping into each section - a perfect companion to my sabbatical this semester.

Better read in print. Notes, bibliography, etc. Difficult to review on a Kindle. No structure or plan of writing recommended, more a this is what other people have done, maybe it'll work for you.

This book is an easy, uplifting, realistic read, based on interviews with 100 scholars from around the world who are particularly successful writers. Sword encourages readers to develop "behavioral, artisanal, social, and emotional habits" that will not only help us write more but that will help us integrate our writing in a more healthy way into our lives. Contrary to what one might expect with this sort of book, Sword does not dictate to readers exactly what habits we "should" develop but rather shares the often very different approaches her interviewees take in each of those four areas. I recommend the book because it was energizing for me to hear about the struggles and triumphs of other scholarly writers. I read it at the very end of this spring semester and feel that it will really help me get the ball rolling on my summer writing.

I found this book to be enlightening, encouraging, and an overall great read. This book will continue to be a good reference for me.

To start with the positives, I found two inspiring things in this book. First of all, I liked Sword's initial metaphor of having four 'pillars' as a writer, which helped me put into perspective where I should work on my writing skills. Second of all, I like the idea of the book, which I see as debunking any notion that there is a 'one-size-fits-all' self-help solution to becoming a prolific, and skilled, writer. Sword put in a lot of field work interviewing academics to demonstrate this to the reader. The main negative: the book is boring. It was incredibly difficult for me to finish it. I'm still reeling from the effort. The difficulty, is that sword has so much material from her interviews (quotes) that she tries to stuff the book full of them. A good 75% of the book is jumping from quote to quote. It is ironic that there was not enough 'air' and 'light' and 'space' in the book for us to appreciate the quotes. In my opinion, the book needed much more negative space to contrast and give light to the dense content in the quotes. It was like drinking from a firehose.

A great read. Highly recommended for anyone struggling to write a dissertation.

Overall, the word that best describes Sword’s book is encouraging. She overwhelms the reader with ideas and encouragements for their own writing endeavors. This encouragement also serves as the book’s greatest weakness, as it was difficult to look back at the results and discern the best path forward. But as Sword would argue, the writer must forge their own path.

As a senior academic, I have battled mountains of self-doubt and not brought forth the many good ideas that I have about my field of medieval art history. Dr. Sword's book is an incredible contribution to the field of academic writing, which is often critiqued for being dry and unexciting. She makes academic writing and the writer's process come fully alive. I will be reading this book over and over when the self-doubt hits -- as well as giving copies of this book and possibly more by her (Stylish Academic Writing beckons) to my graduate students. At long last, an inspiring, solidly researched, carefully structured approach to writing in academe, with great advice on how to fall in love with writing again from a different point of view. Most grateful to Dr. Helen Sword -- her work will have a huge impact on an emerging generation of young academic writers. Bravo!

I wish I had come across this book at the start of my academic career. Sword adopts a positive approach. Rather than the more prescriptive texts available about writing success, this text advocates that learning to write is a process and art. There is no quick fix but nonetheless there are strategies, underpinned by andragogy, which foster a sense of deep learning. For me the realism and honesty in this book gave the confidence to develop decent enough habits. The success has outweighed the discomfort of changing my mindset, acknowledging the workplace and own pre-16 limited UK English education. Enjoying writing is possible. Well worth a read.

Inspiring yet practical, this book challenges me to reach for my personal best in writing and also gives me many of the tools I need to do so.

I am very much enjoying reading this book. It is not a self-help manual in the straightforward sense of giving clear instructions of how to write. Instead it is helping me to understand my own writing habits and preferences better and thus, in part, work on the basis of what works for me already rather than assuming there is an external solution if only I had the discipline to follow it. What Sword does is telling the stories of the writing habits of other academics in a whole range of disciplines, countries and life stages write. The diversity of those stories emphasises the point about there not being a single way to being a productive writer but, more importantly for me, it places me in the company of other people who are writing and have thought about and, at times, struggled with their writing.

A bit heavy on the quotes at times, however, there is a lot of good stuff here. I liked Sword's upfront honesty re what she expected from her work and what she ended up with. I also found it somewhat liberating to read a book about academic writing that did not try to provide a 'prescription for success' but rather encouraged individual reflection. This is more a book about how academics write, rather than how to write.