5.1 Your Writing World

Change your writing by changing your writing world.

A recent book challenges accepted practices for teaching creative writing by arguing separating separate meaning in fiction from meaning in the real world (Salesses, 2021). Salesses argues fiction writing must return to its cultural and historical context. “Reading and writing are not done in a vacuum. What people read and write affects how they act in the world” (Salesses, 2021, p. 6).

Embodied cognition takes Salesses’s (2021) position further by proposing writing does more than affect your actions upon your world. When you write – or when you do any thinking – you act on your world. Consequently, the embodied view of thinking – and writing – does not separate your mind from your world (Clark, 1997; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Shapiro, 2019).

As a result, embodied cognition claims you can change your mind, and how you think, by changing your world (Dawson et al., 2010). Thus, you can change your writing by changing your writing world.

Books which offer writing advice tacitly endorse the embodied perspective (Butler & Burroway, 2005; Swain, 1974; Sword, 2017). Often books advise writers to write in particular spaces at regular times using familiar equipment. Why? Your writing world offers affordances which affect what and how you write or think.

Julia Cameron describes how changing worlds changes her writing. She describes four different writing stations in her house, each supporting a different kind of writing (Cameron, 2022). For instance, one holds an uncomfortable couch upon which she writes short notes, finished before the couch causes her back to ache. During the day, as she writes, she moves from station to station to suit her mood. Each station’s affordances draw forth a different writing style.

What properties characterize your writing world/mind? What worldly properties can you change to alter your writing/thinking? Chapter 5 describes different objects in your world you can use to scaffold academic writing.