Rowena Murray on writing retreats, academic friendships and dealing with discrimination

Rowena Murray is a Professor of Education, Director of Research, in the School of Education at the University of the West of Scotland. She is an internationally recognised expert and author on academic writing and on running writing retreats. In this conversation she talks about the writing retreats for both the importance of learning behaviours around how to write, and for the value of the academic friendships that arise from such writing groups. She also talks about the challenges of being a woman professor dealing with unremitting criticism and undermining, and in having to fight for academic writing as a legitimate research topic in its own right. And she gives very practical advice for creating the support you need to deal with this and how to care for yourself in the process.“When you give smart people dedicated writing time, it is astonishing how much they do. Immediately.”“They know that a rough draft is called rough draft for a reason. But they still hesitate to write … they have the perfectionism and then they have the procrastination.”“It’s a different set of relationships [developed at writing retreats] that are collegial and positive and sympathetic and intellectual as well.”“As a woman professor, the undermining, the bullying, the pressure, the unremitting criticism has intensified throughout my career.”Overview:01:30 Rowena’s background, learning about writing and starting writing retreats and workshops08:00 Teaching writing as being about behavior change, how writing retreats help, creating the retreat environment, and the importance of the social aspects18:15 Practical strategies and SMART goal setting for writing34:05 The personal/career challenges finding a place in the academic infrastructure, the long path to becoming a professor of academic writing, and the importance of her writing group as support46:00 Why there are more women at writing retreats49:00 Discriminations faced by female professors, and advice to younger women58:25 Rowena’s various self-care1:02:00 Final thoughts on the importance of special intellectual friendshipsAnd in more detail, she talks about (times approximate) …01:30 Rowena introduces herself as working at Uni of the West of Scotland, a wider access college, and talks about her first degree at Uni of Glasgow in Scottish language and literature, and then going to Pennsylvania to do volleyball coaching where she also did a PhD in English at Penn State.05:02 Rowena discusses how she came to be fascinated by writing, through learning to teach about writing, and reflecting on her own experiences. When she came back to Scotland she decided to start teaching thesis writing courses in the mid 80s. From doing these courses for around 10 years she wrote the content for the ‘How to write a thesis’ book. And it kept growing as people recognised there was a need for it. Hesitates to use the word ‘need’, everyone loves them, but has been told by someone they hope there comes a day when people won’t ‘need’ a writing course. But they miss the broader context in which writing retreats are essential, for those who choose to go. It is a haven, a behaviour change model, it’s a network. Mostly women who choose to go. Not a sense about ‘needing’ but about the environment that doesn’t allow us to write in the ways we really want to.8:00 What’s driving this need? It’s about individuals not being sure how to fit writing in their personal lives. Also a need because we don’t learn how

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