Ep. 1. Metaphor as Navigation Device: A Conversation with Michelle Boyd of InkWell Writing Retreats

Writing is hard in the same ways that being a human is hard. There's no template to tell us the one, proven, correct way to do it. And in writing, as in life, we're operating within constraints that we didn't choose. Our guest today is Michelle Boyd, and her oracle for us is the question: "What metaphor describes your experience of the writing process?" When we identify a writing metaphor, it becomes a mental model, a navigation tool, that we can use to locate ourselves within our writing process and move through it with purpose. A metaphor works for the same reason that metaphors are useful in any human context: because we make meaning through comparison, connection, and relationship. Listen to this episode to learn why academic writing is so hard, how to recognize when we're stuck, and how to use a writing metaphor to see our process holistically and get ourselves moving forward again. (length: 37:03)

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Michelle’s links:

• InkWell Writing Retreats website: https://www.inkwellretreats.org/

• Article by Michelle Boyd: “How We Write: Understanding Scholarly Writing Through Metaphor” (2012): http://www.michelleboyd.net/uploads/3/8/7/8/3878615/boyd_2012.pdf

Additional Resource:

• Article by Helen Sword: “Snowflakes, Splinters, and Cobblestones: Metaphors for Writing” (2019): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331366415_Snowflakes_Splinters_and_Cobblestones_Metaphors_for_Writing_Methodologies_and_Practices