I find myself responding to this (initially) as a fellow supporter of academic writers. It seems like a really lovely way into reframing the role of citations in academic writing as a particular formalized way of tracing lineage. Participating in this #AcWriMoments 2023 might become a point in the lineage of some writing extending what I've written about scholarly publishing as conversation.
However, I am also thinking about the lineage of my PhD project (and subsequent book) and how that was influenced both by personal life events and by specific work that I read and scholars I admired. hmm may need to think more about that.
Thanks for this, Jo! Just imagine how much more fun and engaging lit reviews would be to read if they were framed as stories of scholarly lineage and/or appreciative conversations with those whose work we build on....
You can totally use this with your class! When you share the link with them, just let them know that when they click through, they’ll be prompted to subscribe in order to view the prompt, but they don’t have to -- they can click through without subscribing if they only want to view the one prompt :)
I absolutely adore today's post. It makes me feel all deja-vu-y just thinking about my timeline, is a summation of many 'Sliding Door' moments if my life. All the would-haves, could-haves, and should-have moments are gently sprinkling me with feelings of anemoia. Thank you, Margy and Helen. It has prompted me to enjoy where I am in this moment - and to feel excited about where I am going with my writing.
Oh please, no apologies needed! What could be more important than story time!? 😊 So glad that you enjoyed the prompt, Jermy. I know what you mean about Sliding Doors moments. 🙏
My (life) project, which is helping people to (re)connect with a love of writing and creativity (through the lens of personal wellbeing), began when I was a very small child making tiny folded books out of pieces of paper and having imaginary conversations with fictional characters in my head.
Along the way, I've encountered a creative family tree (to use Austin Kleon's term) of people (real and fictional) who have influenced my thinking, inspired and supported me. Too many to list here but including Charlotte Bronte; my high school teacher, Valerie Quinlivan; Celia Hunt; D W Winnicott; Antonio Damasio; bell hooks; Frida Kahlo... And on.
When I'm feeling a bit lost or beleaguered, I sometimes imagine all these people in my lineage standing around me, gently encouraging or questioning me. As I write this, I realise that I'm still that five year old, having imaginary conversations in my head. Except now I get to have them out loud too. 🥰🌳
I love this, Sophie1 I wrote a newsletter post a few months back in which I describe how one of the participants in my Creativity Catalyst imagined the philosophers that she was studying for her PhD -- Nietzsche, Barthes, Derrida etc -- gathering for a drink in a bar. Go to https://helensword.substack.com/p/juxtapositions-and-layerings and scroll down to Jasmine's entry under "Be Dramatic." I'd love to see a similar visualisation of one of your imaginary conversations!
What an adorable image of child you making miniature books and having imaginary conversations! So sweet. (I think you may love the prompt we have in story for Day 12 ;) !)
this is so lovely! not just as a prompt but as documentation of the way we work together even when we're not working together--by reading one another's work. And then how that can lead us to work together more substantially. such an example of what the scholarly life can and should be.
Likewise! Though my part of it would consist of an embarrassingly large number of phone calls in which you guided me through my business and writing insecurities :))))
I've been meaning to do this for a long, long time. I just didn't know there would be so much of it! It is an almost 7,000 outline of my entire teaching career! Thank you!
I love this! Because my current project is not exactly my own, I can trace its lineage in only the most formal sense. But my dissertation... That's a fun one to trace. I'll come back when I've done it.
In the meantime, a note! Margy, I remember in 2018 Tiff asked if I had seen your AcWriMo videos. (I was prepping for comps at the time, at Nido.) I think that was my first introduction to your work.
And then if I were tracing the timeline of my connection to your work, when Tiff had her going away party and we got to meet and chat tarot it was like the completion of a beautiful circuit in a spiral.
Oh how funny! It’s a small Durham, isn’t it. Yep, I just checked, and some of those old 2018 videos are still on YouTube ... apparently Google never forgets. 😆
Really, really enjoyed this prompt, Margy and Helen! It will make me ponder for a good while about projects and their lineages. Might even revive some old ones... let's see. Such a useful and organized (at least for me) way to reflect on our writing! Thank you!
What an honor, Helen - because YOU have certainly been a part of mine for as far back as I can remember! It's been, truly, a pleasure to see our paths cross... A pleasure and a gift.
As I started to write in response to this prompt, I thought about the Acknowledgements at the start of my book. The list of people I thanked represent the lineage for the ideas in that book, to be sure. And my mind also had a Hebrew Bible moment, as Adam begat...Noah begat...etc. The problem with this lineage is that it excludes all of the women who did the labor, both literally and metaphorically. Lucky for us, the great women who inspire us to write can be acknowledged, included, and appreciated! Thank you Helen and Margy!
Yet again, I think of my micro poems in relation to all these writing prompts, but now in telling a sequential story, my story, snippets of my “lineage,” and definitely the roots of my interests, I consider the first 16 or so of these micro poems as cathartic, revealing things about myself—and my interests—that I never realized before. So through telling my “origin” story in these micro poems, I began the lineage of my works. These poems came about remembering a creative non-fiction course I was enrolled in with the late Minnie-Bruce Pratt over 10 years ago. So I credit Minnie-Bruce, among others, as an influence. When Minnie-Bruce told me I was a good writer at the conclusion of the course, I paid attention. One of the best classes I ever took, and I consider her an influence to this day. One other important influence is my friend, colleague, and writing partner. Even though they have much more experience with academic writing, they didn’t discount my ideas, and never has. They have a knack for understanding what I often try to say, but also taught me to rewrite my ideas and theories in ways that made much more sense. In fact, a decade-long writing and working relationship developed into a published article that basically shared the crux of our work together (making reference to our unique writing partnership). I still hope to engage them in more writing, but, alas, they are no longer in academia. But I still have hope.
This prompt really connected me to my Dad who retired after 28 years in the army to teach engineering at NMSU. As a kid, I really understood that parenting as rigid and rule driven and there were certainly moments where he barked orders at the four of us. In frustrated moments, Mom would reinforce notion that by referring to dad as "the Colonel." But as an adult, I came to understand how he used intuition and compassion to make decisions. So my understanding of academic policy as a way to care for students by providing them with boundaries, structure and accountability is really rooted in the journey of that relationship. And now I am getting leaky . . . .
I thought about this prompt off and on today. In one sense, the lineage of my project is literally a family lineage. I got curious about the family stories which turned into history which turned into this book project. However, it’s much more tangled than a usual family history - I’m also a (lapsed) biochemist and the project is much more biochemistry (circular with later bits influencing earlier bits and a tendency to use everything in some way) than inorganic chemistry (linear, with extra bits just thrown out as waste). And the interconnectedness and non-linear lineage is part of the challenge (or, as the predictive text would have it, charm).
1984. Kimberly's mom makes a gorgeous Blue Fairy (from Pinocchio) costume for Kimberly, launching a lifelong delight in dressing up in exquisite costumes (as opposed to whatever's lying around) and admiring the exquisite costumes of others. Around the same time, Kimberly's parents take her to the library often.
1988. Kimberly's dad starts library school. Kimberly hangs out at the library school, a lot. She loves it there.
1994. A guidance counselor who is completely at a loss for what extracurriculars to recommend when she asks Kimberly what she's into and Kimberly answers, "Reading," suggests volunteering at the library, so Kimberly does.
1999. W. (then-boyfriend, now-husband) introduces Kimberly to Final Fantasy, a lovely video game series with gorgeous music. O., the then-boyfriend now-husband of one of W.'s housemates, says to Kimberly while they're in the middle of playing some board game, "You should be a librarian."
2007. Completely stressed out by being an early career high school teacher, Kimberly starts researching library schools.
2008. W. comes home from work and tells Kimberly that his current boss has inspired him to go to library school so they're going to library school together.
2009. Kimberly and W. start library school. Kimberly's advisor is Sandra. Kimberly loves Sandra. Kimberly gets a job as an RA in an outreach program of the School of Education, providing resources and professional development to K-12 educators. (Resources from this department saved her bacon many times when she was a teacher.)
2011. Kimberly gets a job as a school librarian split between two middle schools.
2012. Kimberly's supervisor from her RA job tells Kimberly, "I'm taking a different job so they'll be posting this one eventually if you want it." Kimberly does. The school librarian situation she's found herself in isn't what she dreamed of. Eventually Kimberly gets that job and starts working for that outreach program full-time.
2013. Kimberly starts working on projects where she gets to interview teachers about their work. Her office is down the hall from where the School of Ed hosts all of their brown bags and she goes to a lot of them. She decides she wants to pursue a PhD so she can understand what they're talking about better and maybe publish research about educators', including school librarians', good work. She figures she'll do it part time with the tuition remission she gets as a benefit of her job.
2014. The executive director of the outreach program is fired. (Without cause as far as Kimberly knows.) Kimberly decides that instead of doing the PhD part-time, she'd like to do it full-time, since her program is probably going to be dismantled. She talks to Sandra about the PhD program where she got her master's in library science and says she wants to work on the library as a place for writing and pop culture engagement. Sandra says there's a model for this and it's called Connected Learning. Kimberly applies to the PhD.
2015. Sandra invites Crystle Martin, a scholar of connected learning and leader in the Young Adult Library Services Association, to talk to students at the library school and invites Kimberly to come to the talk and then join them for lunch. Kimberly and Crystle talk about spending way too much time playing video games.
2016 - 2017. Kimberly messes around with different dissertation possibilities. She includes a chapter on gaming and libraries in her comps plan.
2017. Kimberly decides to go to Cosplay America, a costuming convention.
2018. Kimberly starts work on the gaming comps chapter. She attends a Final Fantasy orchestral concert. People have dressed up in gorgeous costumes as characters from the games. They're so great it kind of makes her want to cry. The next day, she reads Crystle's dissertation about the information literacy practices of World of Warcraft players. In the conclusion, Crystle suggests that people could replicate her methods to help validate her information literacy model. Kimberly thinks, "I could do that, but with cosplayers!" She bangs out a dissertation prospectus in 2 hours after literal years of hemming and hawing.
2019. Kimberly writes her comps, now with a changed set of chapters. She assembles her committee, including Crystle. She writes a blog post about the process and uses a Final Fantasy screenshot in it. She writes and defends her comps. She writes her proposal in November for AcWriMo. She attends a local con and introduces herself to the cosplay guests, telling them she may contact them to participate in her dissertation.
2020. Kimberly defends her proposal. In freaking February. She has this whole plan that involves going to conventions to talk to cosplayers. AHAHAHAHA. There are no conventions. But she interviews the cosplayers over Zoom.
2020-2021. Kimberly conducts research, scales her design way back, conducts more research, writes, defends, and graduates. She applies for a postdoc at the Connected Learning Lab, where Crystle worked when they first met. She gets the job.
2022-present. Kimberly hasn't touched the cosplay work in a long time but has worked on connected learning in libraries for the whole postdoc.
I find myself responding to this (initially) as a fellow supporter of academic writers. It seems like a really lovely way into reframing the role of citations in academic writing as a particular formalized way of tracing lineage. Participating in this #AcWriMoments 2023 might become a point in the lineage of some writing extending what I've written about scholarly publishing as conversation.
However, I am also thinking about the lineage of my PhD project (and subsequent book) and how that was influenced both by personal life events and by specific work that I read and scholars I admired. hmm may need to think more about that.
Thanks for this, Jo! Just imagine how much more fun and engaging lit reviews would be to read if they were framed as stories of scholarly lineage and/or appreciative conversations with those whose work we build on....
Love this, Jo! ✨
The prompt is awesome, isn't it? I super want to appropriate it for our first/second-year writing students at my community college <3
You can totally use this with your class! When you share the link with them, just let them know that when they click through, they’ll be prompted to subscribe in order to view the prompt, but they don’t have to -- they can click through without subscribing if they only want to view the one prompt :)
Thanks for the invitation and the heads up re: subscribing :)
I absolutely adore today's post. It makes me feel all deja-vu-y just thinking about my timeline, is a summation of many 'Sliding Door' moments if my life. All the would-haves, could-haves, and should-have moments are gently sprinkling me with feelings of anemoia. Thank you, Margy and Helen. It has prompted me to enjoy where I am in this moment - and to feel excited about where I am going with my writing.
That's so lovely to hear, Jermy!
Apologies for all the typos 😆 my two youngest were coming in and out of the home office, demanding story time!
Oh please, no apologies needed! What could be more important than story time!? 😊 So glad that you enjoyed the prompt, Jermy. I know what you mean about Sliding Doors moments. 🙏
I love the "deja-vu-y"... (May I borrow it?)
Absolutely😂I did try experimenting with deja-vu-ish but vu-y has more of that Ooh lala feel doesn't it??
Definitely!!! I can envision someone with long hair tossing their curls, with a tiny hand movement as they say it! So appropriate!
Love this prompt, Helen and Margy.
My (life) project, which is helping people to (re)connect with a love of writing and creativity (through the lens of personal wellbeing), began when I was a very small child making tiny folded books out of pieces of paper and having imaginary conversations with fictional characters in my head.
Along the way, I've encountered a creative family tree (to use Austin Kleon's term) of people (real and fictional) who have influenced my thinking, inspired and supported me. Too many to list here but including Charlotte Bronte; my high school teacher, Valerie Quinlivan; Celia Hunt; D W Winnicott; Antonio Damasio; bell hooks; Frida Kahlo... And on.
When I'm feeling a bit lost or beleaguered, I sometimes imagine all these people in my lineage standing around me, gently encouraging or questioning me. As I write this, I realise that I'm still that five year old, having imaginary conversations in my head. Except now I get to have them out loud too. 🥰🌳
I love this, Sophie1 I wrote a newsletter post a few months back in which I describe how one of the participants in my Creativity Catalyst imagined the philosophers that she was studying for her PhD -- Nietzsche, Barthes, Derrida etc -- gathering for a drink in a bar. Go to https://helensword.substack.com/p/juxtapositions-and-layerings and scroll down to Jasmine's entry under "Be Dramatic." I'd love to see a similar visualisation of one of your imaginary conversations!
How brilliant! I love Jasmine's image. I'll think about how I could do this. Could be very helpful - thank you! 💜
What an adorable image of child you making miniature books and having imaginary conversations! So sweet. (I think you may love the prompt we have in story for Day 12 ;) !)
LOVE this.
this is so lovely! not just as a prompt but as documentation of the way we work together even when we're not working together--by reading one another's work. And then how that can lead us to work together more substantially. such an example of what the scholarly life can and should be.
By reading each other’s work, yes, but also by seeking each other out for live conversations -- I’ve treasured all of mine with you, Michelle!
So true Helen and I feel the same!
I need to write a Michelle-Margy timeline next! You have been such a huge influence and inspiration to me 🙏💝
Likewise! Though my part of it would consist of an embarrassingly large number of phone calls in which you guided me through my business and writing insecurities :))))
Oh my friend! It goes both ways! You have been the wind beneath my wings oh so many times! 🪽😄
I've been meaning to do this for a long, long time. I just didn't know there would be so much of it! It is an almost 7,000 outline of my entire teaching career! Thank you!
WOW! Hope you find some good nuggets of insight in there :)
Ditto!
I love this! Because my current project is not exactly my own, I can trace its lineage in only the most formal sense. But my dissertation... That's a fun one to trace. I'll come back when I've done it.
In the meantime, a note! Margy, I remember in 2018 Tiff asked if I had seen your AcWriMo videos. (I was prepping for comps at the time, at Nido.) I think that was my first introduction to your work.
And then if I were tracing the timeline of my connection to your work, when Tiff had her going away party and we got to meet and chat tarot it was like the completion of a beautiful circuit in a spiral.
Oh how funny! It’s a small Durham, isn’t it. Yep, I just checked, and some of those old 2018 videos are still on YouTube ... apparently Google never forgets. 😆
My 30 Days of Writing with Pleasure videos are on YouTube too - I’m planning to resurrect them as a January series in early 2024.
Really, really enjoyed this prompt, Margy and Helen! It will make me ponder for a good while about projects and their lineages. Might even revive some old ones... let's see. Such a useful and organized (at least for me) way to reflect on our writing! Thank you!
You’re definitely part of my scholarly lineage, Pat!
What an honor, Helen - because YOU have certainly been a part of mine for as far back as I can remember! It's been, truly, a pleasure to see our paths cross... A pleasure and a gift.
So glad you liked it, Pat! No doubt many academic writers would cite you in their own lineages, having learned much from you ✍️
You are much too kind, Margy! To the extent what you said might be (even a little bit) true: Thank you!
As I started to write in response to this prompt, I thought about the Acknowledgements at the start of my book. The list of people I thanked represent the lineage for the ideas in that book, to be sure. And my mind also had a Hebrew Bible moment, as Adam begat...Noah begat...etc. The problem with this lineage is that it excludes all of the women who did the labor, both literally and metaphorically. Lucky for us, the great women who inspire us to write can be acknowledged, included, and appreciated! Thank you Helen and Margy!
I know what you mean - those occluded lineages can be haunting sometimes. Very grateful to have you here writing along with us, Julia!
Ditto! And of course you and I go back a long way, Julia: Bloomington, Indiana, 1992!!
Yet again, I think of my micro poems in relation to all these writing prompts, but now in telling a sequential story, my story, snippets of my “lineage,” and definitely the roots of my interests, I consider the first 16 or so of these micro poems as cathartic, revealing things about myself—and my interests—that I never realized before. So through telling my “origin” story in these micro poems, I began the lineage of my works. These poems came about remembering a creative non-fiction course I was enrolled in with the late Minnie-Bruce Pratt over 10 years ago. So I credit Minnie-Bruce, among others, as an influence. When Minnie-Bruce told me I was a good writer at the conclusion of the course, I paid attention. One of the best classes I ever took, and I consider her an influence to this day. One other important influence is my friend, colleague, and writing partner. Even though they have much more experience with academic writing, they didn’t discount my ideas, and never has. They have a knack for understanding what I often try to say, but also taught me to rewrite my ideas and theories in ways that made much more sense. In fact, a decade-long writing and working relationship developed into a published article that basically shared the crux of our work together (making reference to our unique writing partnership). I still hope to engage them in more writing, but, alas, they are no longer in academia. But I still have hope.
So many appreciative memories here, Rachael. Inspiring teachers and supportive colleagues/collaborators are so precious.
This prompt really connected me to my Dad who retired after 28 years in the army to teach engineering at NMSU. As a kid, I really understood that parenting as rigid and rule driven and there were certainly moments where he barked orders at the four of us. In frustrated moments, Mom would reinforce notion that by referring to dad as "the Colonel." But as an adult, I came to understand how he used intuition and compassion to make decisions. So my understanding of academic policy as a way to care for students by providing them with boundaries, structure and accountability is really rooted in the journey of that relationship. And now I am getting leaky . . . .
What a beautiful story, Rebecca - thanks for sharing!
Aww, I’m so glad that this prompt helped you surface some important memories and that the memories hold useful insights for you! ❤️🩹
Fantastic prompt! This is so helpful and insightful as an exercise. Thanks!
I thought about this prompt off and on today. In one sense, the lineage of my project is literally a family lineage. I got curious about the family stories which turned into history which turned into this book project. However, it’s much more tangled than a usual family history - I’m also a (lapsed) biochemist and the project is much more biochemistry (circular with later bits influencing earlier bits and a tendency to use everything in some way) than inorganic chemistry (linear, with extra bits just thrown out as waste). And the interconnectedness and non-linear lineage is part of the challenge (or, as the predictive text would have it, charm).
Challenge to charm, I love that!
Ooh, the predictive text’s Freudian slip is very apt!
Okay. Here goes.
1984. Kimberly's mom makes a gorgeous Blue Fairy (from Pinocchio) costume for Kimberly, launching a lifelong delight in dressing up in exquisite costumes (as opposed to whatever's lying around) and admiring the exquisite costumes of others. Around the same time, Kimberly's parents take her to the library often.
1988. Kimberly's dad starts library school. Kimberly hangs out at the library school, a lot. She loves it there.
1994. A guidance counselor who is completely at a loss for what extracurriculars to recommend when she asks Kimberly what she's into and Kimberly answers, "Reading," suggests volunteering at the library, so Kimberly does.
1999. W. (then-boyfriend, now-husband) introduces Kimberly to Final Fantasy, a lovely video game series with gorgeous music. O., the then-boyfriend now-husband of one of W.'s housemates, says to Kimberly while they're in the middle of playing some board game, "You should be a librarian."
2007. Completely stressed out by being an early career high school teacher, Kimberly starts researching library schools.
2008. W. comes home from work and tells Kimberly that his current boss has inspired him to go to library school so they're going to library school together.
2009. Kimberly and W. start library school. Kimberly's advisor is Sandra. Kimberly loves Sandra. Kimberly gets a job as an RA in an outreach program of the School of Education, providing resources and professional development to K-12 educators. (Resources from this department saved her bacon many times when she was a teacher.)
2011. Kimberly gets a job as a school librarian split between two middle schools.
2012. Kimberly's supervisor from her RA job tells Kimberly, "I'm taking a different job so they'll be posting this one eventually if you want it." Kimberly does. The school librarian situation she's found herself in isn't what she dreamed of. Eventually Kimberly gets that job and starts working for that outreach program full-time.
2013. Kimberly starts working on projects where she gets to interview teachers about their work. Her office is down the hall from where the School of Ed hosts all of their brown bags and she goes to a lot of them. She decides she wants to pursue a PhD so she can understand what they're talking about better and maybe publish research about educators', including school librarians', good work. She figures she'll do it part time with the tuition remission she gets as a benefit of her job.
2014. The executive director of the outreach program is fired. (Without cause as far as Kimberly knows.) Kimberly decides that instead of doing the PhD part-time, she'd like to do it full-time, since her program is probably going to be dismantled. She talks to Sandra about the PhD program where she got her master's in library science and says she wants to work on the library as a place for writing and pop culture engagement. Sandra says there's a model for this and it's called Connected Learning. Kimberly applies to the PhD.
2015. Sandra invites Crystle Martin, a scholar of connected learning and leader in the Young Adult Library Services Association, to talk to students at the library school and invites Kimberly to come to the talk and then join them for lunch. Kimberly and Crystle talk about spending way too much time playing video games.
2016 - 2017. Kimberly messes around with different dissertation possibilities. She includes a chapter on gaming and libraries in her comps plan.
2017. Kimberly decides to go to Cosplay America, a costuming convention.
2018. Kimberly starts work on the gaming comps chapter. She attends a Final Fantasy orchestral concert. People have dressed up in gorgeous costumes as characters from the games. They're so great it kind of makes her want to cry. The next day, she reads Crystle's dissertation about the information literacy practices of World of Warcraft players. In the conclusion, Crystle suggests that people could replicate her methods to help validate her information literacy model. Kimberly thinks, "I could do that, but with cosplayers!" She bangs out a dissertation prospectus in 2 hours after literal years of hemming and hawing.
2019. Kimberly writes her comps, now with a changed set of chapters. She assembles her committee, including Crystle. She writes a blog post about the process and uses a Final Fantasy screenshot in it. She writes and defends her comps. She writes her proposal in November for AcWriMo. She attends a local con and introduces herself to the cosplay guests, telling them she may contact them to participate in her dissertation.
2020. Kimberly defends her proposal. In freaking February. She has this whole plan that involves going to conventions to talk to cosplayers. AHAHAHAHA. There are no conventions. But she interviews the cosplayers over Zoom.
2020-2021. Kimberly conducts research, scales her design way back, conducts more research, writes, defends, and graduates. She applies for a postdoc at the Connected Learning Lab, where Crystle worked when they first met. She gets the job.
2022-present. Kimberly hasn't touched the cosplay work in a long time but has worked on connected learning in libraries for the whole postdoc.
It’s so fun to see the through-lines of costumes and libraries over the decades! Thanks for sharing, Kimberly ✨