Writing has become more visible in academia through writing advice manuals and the faculty development activities they inspire. In this article, I examine writing advice manuals and argue they are epistemologically current traditional, which limits how well and how far they can support scholarly writers. Writing advice manuals and composition scholarship offer conflicting visions of scholarly writing knowledge about writing, particularly with respect to the writing process and the place of rhetorical invention. I finally call on scholars in composition studies to attend to invention in scholarly writing through reflection, research, and teaching.