We are all scribblers now but scribbling is not regarded positively. Nevertheless, scribbling is described as one of four connected processes in a useful model of academic writing. These metaphors are frivolously summarised as scrabbling, scribbling, scribing and scrubbing. Frivolity is first presented as an antonym of academic seriousness. But it is also used positively in three other ways: (1) helping free academics from some of the more daunting and constricting aspects of academic writing; (2) challenging some of the dualisms that structure and confine our thinking and understanding; and (3) following Derrida, as a strategy to resist premature closure and to resist academic writing as a claim to certainty and transparency. The main body of the article then focuses on an analysis of the four metaphorical processes of scrabbling, scribbling, scribing and scrubbing.