Introduction: The 90-day book -- Self-help -- Writing a book : a brief history -- Credos -- Form -- Academic interest -- Style -- Exercises -- The groves of academe -- Materials -- Appendix A: Ten rules of writing -- Appendix B: PEN Ten interview

"Every day I write the book, a guide to style and writing for academics, is Amitava Kumar's fifth book of creative nonfiction with Duke University Press. Written in short first-person vignettes, this book melds form and content to explore the writing process both in and out of the academy, while offering a portrait of Kumar's writing life throughout. Kumar, whose background is in literary theory, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory, has long been a critic of academic writing and an advocate for academics to write in a more 'writerly' style. This book is an attempt to bring together reflections on Kumar's own writing style and models used by other academics. It notably collects firsthand testimony on writing from many established writers and academics-Anna Tsing, Jack Halberstam, Rob Nixon, and Kathleen Stewart, to name a few-and engages with the work of contemporary nonfiction writers such as Geoff Dyer, Claudia Rankine, and Maggie Nelson. The book is divided into nine sections-each with several sub-chapters-and two appendixes: Kumar's "Ten Rules of Writing" and a reprinted PEN 10 interview. It will be of wide interest to readers of creative nonfiction, as well as to scholars and students of writing and rhetoric"--