Over on the Whisper Collective Podcast, I’ve just released a series of audio recordings from the new book, Writing Well and Being Well for your PhD and Beyond.
In this first practice, I encourage you to get out of the house. It’s hard to read and walk at the same time, so we made it portable.
Put your headphones on, lace up your shoes, and plan to get away from your desk with a walking practice to help stir up thoughts and get your writing going.
In A Philosophy of Walking, Frédéric Gros explores ways that walking and thinking are intertwined. Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust and Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project are two of my favourite examples of people walking and thinking through urban spaces. In ‘Kinds of Water’, the poet Anne Carson walks the pilgrimage trail to Santiago di Compostela, accompanied by epigraphs of Japanese poets. Above Heidelberg University is a beautiful walk called the ‘Philosopher’s Way’, and behind some of the oldest colleges in Cambridge is a walk called ‘The Backs’—both places where scholars could jog their thinking by getting physically moving, either alone or in company.
Come along on a thinking and planning walking practice.
Listen here, with links to all your favourite listening platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1510516/13582284
This practice comes from Chapter 1, ‘Reading and Thinking’ in Writing Well and Being Well for your PhD and Beyond.
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
