Laura Micciche - Böcker

Acknowledging Writing Partners treats the genre of written acknowledgements as a lens for viewing writing as a practice of indebted partnerships. Like new media scholars who have argued that studying ubiquitous technologies such as the pencil reveals the mundane and profound ways in which writing is always mediated by tools, Laura R. Micciche argues that writing activities are frequently mediated by human and non-human others, advancing a view of composing that accounts for partners who emerge in acknowledgements: feelings, animals, and random material phenomena. Acknowledgements are micro economies of debt and praise; they reveal writing's connectedness, often repressed by the argument or set of propositions that follow. Micciche suggests new methods for studying and theorizing writing that take into account the whole surround of writing. In doing so, Micciche asks what difference this economy makes to dominant conceptions of writers and writing as well as to pedagogical principles that inform writing instruction—and what difference it make to writers.

Revision sometimes seems more metaphor than real, having been variously described as a stage, an act of goal setting, a method of correction, a process of discovery, a form of resistance. Revising Moves makes a significant contribution to writing theory by collecting stories of revision that honor revision’s vitality and immerse readers in rooms, life circumstances, and scenes where revision comes to life.  In these narrative-driven essays written by a wide range of writing professionals, Revising Moves describes revision as a messy, generative, and often collaborative act. These meditations reveal how revision is both a micro practice tracked by textual change and a macro phenomenon rooted in family life, institutional culture, identity commitments, and political and social upheaval. Contributors depict revision as a holistic undertaking and a radically contextualized, distributed practice that showcases its relationality to everything else. Authors share their revision processes when creating scholarly works, institutional and self-promoting documents, and creative projects. Through narrative the volume opens a window to what is often unseen in a finished text: months or years of work, life events that disrupt or alter writing plans, multiple draft changes, questions about writerly identity and positionality, layers of (sometimes contradictory) feedback, and much more.