ABSTRACT
The role of academic development in enhancing the experience of writing It seems clear that money and Woolf’s room of one’s own are not in themselves sufficient conditions for an academic woman to write. Instead we find varying and complex relationships between individual women and their writing. Academic developers have a role in assisting women in negotiating those relationships so that they come to write more productively and with more pleasure. A key role is to devise academic development opportunities that address the issue in a searching and ongoing way, rather than glossing over its complexities. Because for many women the deepest level of struggle with writing involves elements of our unconscious, it is crucial that any interventions address the somewhat elusive issue of be(com)ing a writer. Without that, says Brande, advice on ‘what to do’ is a waste of time. If through collectively imagining ourselves as writers we can overcome some of our deep resistances, then it is possible that we will have the will to overcome other more pragmatic obstacles. But this involves acknowledging the transformative nature of the process of be(com)ing a writer, the danger of stepping outside normative subject positions, and the strength of the resistance we will sometimes experience from within ourselves, consciously and unconsciously. This kind of change is only likely in certain kinds of contexts, notably ones where there is time and circumstance for intimacy and trust to be established.
