1. This is a hard one. I have no idea why writing is hard for some people and relatively easy for others. I think a lot of people simply aren't that interested in writing, or they're not passionate readers. Most of the time, the most voracious readers are the best writers, or at least the people who learn to write well quickly. If a person feels some creative connection to the act of writing, as opposed to feeling oppressed by grammar and style rules for an arbitrary assignment, he or she is much more likely to engage the work in a constructive way. I think a lot of people learn to fear language in grade school as a consequence of handwriting instruction and grammar instruction. Theses skills are certainly necessary, but a student needs to believe that his or her ideas matter as well.
2. I think of talent as something that you're born with. It can't be taught. It is usually some skill in excess of what the average person would possess, and it is discovered in the process of learning or trying different things. So one kid might find that he can swim faster than everyone else in class on the first day of swimming lessons, with virtually no prior experience. Another kid might find that she learns to read way faster than the other kids in her class, even though she's received no extra instruction. Talent is sort of a mystery, in that it seems to be genetically encoded and somewhat arbitrary.
But talent doesn't tell the whole story. A lot of people take their talent for granted, and their peers catch up to them fairly quickly. Skill to me is something gained through hard work. Maybe someone is refining and developing a given talent, or maybe someone is starting from square one, with no discernible aptitude, and working to gain proficiency. It requires discipline, patience, and faith that development will occur over time. "Talent" is sort of like where you start, and "skill" is where you go with it. The proportion of each is different for everyone in every aspect of life.
So writing is part talent and part skill for just about everyone. Over time it becomes difficult to tell which is which.
3. I think writing is learned through reading. And through play. Through imagination. And practice. I think kids start "writing" as soon as they start creating imaginary worlds. They learn to color, they learn the alphabet, and finally they learn to write. All of this learning is play. It isn't until we get older that learning is work. But I think even analytical writing--MLA style, citations, etc.--is ultimately imaginative, in that it requires application of unique interpretive abilities and personal experience. It's the conventions that scare people--they still scare me--but learning them allows the writer to refine his work so that it will be respected by certain audiences. In any kind of writing, this tension exists, between what the audience demands both conventionally and in terms of content and what the writer wants to express in its most unfettered form. Practice helps reduce anxiety over this tension, as well as an acknowledgment of its basically arbitrary aspects.
4. I can only think of a caricature. Someone with thick glasses hunched over a typewriter. Probably a chain-smoking coffee drinker, who also enjoys hard liquor and steak when not working. This person is crabby and opinionated, as a consequence of deep insecurity. He doesn't date much but considers himself extremely attractive, though not necessarily in a physical way. He is not a woman. He writes in a well-off friend's parlor, while the friend is out at an office job, and he's wearing a sweaty undershirt. He has a perpetual five-o'clock shadow. He is surprisingly likable and given to random acts of extreme generosity, such as handing all the money in his wallet (usually not very much) to a homeless guy.
5. This image of the writer comes from mid-twentieth-century American writers, kind of in the Jack Kerouac / Henry Miller vein. At least I think that's where it comes from. I'm not sure why, but I think it's a fairly common stereotype. It represents almost no one who actually writes. It's sort of a goofy ideal of masculinity, versions of which exist in shows like Mad Men, for example. I suppose it represents freedom and uncompromising artistic vision. I think most writers in this day and age are much less likely to smoke, and they definitely aren't using typewriters. I suspect most of them are women and are fairly well adjusted.
6. I guess I think of "technology" in terms of wires and gadgets, phones, computers, space shuttles, tanks, the Internet, and so forth. But in a broader sense, technology can refer to any tool or innovation that helps human beings perform a certain task. Technology is a "labor-reducer," maybe? But a paradoxical labor-reducer, in the sense that it always leads to more labor. In that sense, writing could be described as a technology. Without writing, oral culture never would have transformed into written culture, and whether or not that's a technological transformation, it is certainly a significant one.
7. Yes, I've heard the term "writing process" before. To me, it refers to whatever sequence of acts a given writer uses to accomplish a given writing task. So a fiction writer might have an idea for a story, sit down and try to write it, struggle through a first draft, let it sit for a while, revise, set aside, revise, set aside, revise, submit for publication, get rejected, re-submit to a different publication, get accepted. That's one potential process among many. Different types of writing for different types of audiences are likely to require different processes.
8. Writing is both social and private. It depends on the intent. I think I learned this the hard way. I shared some writing with friends that I should have realized was private. Years later, it still makes me feel embarrassed, though I don't think anyone remembers or cares. A writer needs to learn what work he's comfortable sharing and what work is essentially therapeutic. It's different for everyone. There are other approaches to this question. The act of writing itself is private (unless it's group writing, which I hate), but it becomes social once it's shared. But it's also true that even the private act of writing is social in the sense that it involves an interplay of different texts and conversations that are inevitably floating in the author's head. It can also be described in terms of "writing process." For example, a workshop involves the private act of drafting and the social act of critiquing.
9. Illiteracy means lacking the ability to read and write. I suppose there are varying degrees of illiteracy, depending on how much education a person has. The notion of illiteracy implies that there is some cut-off of learning at which a person becomes "literate." There are also terms like "functionally illiterate," which refers to the ability to do some low-level reading and writing, but not at an "adult" level. Judging from some of the readings from this week, the term is somewhat contentious.
My understanding is that the literacy rate in the U.S. is pretty high, something like 98% of adults, though probably this data is disputable. Primary causes of illiteracy could be learning disability or poverty. Illiteracy is certainly a problem for those who have it, but again, my understanding is that illiteracy is not at "moral panic" levels in the United States. To the extent that it is a problem, it is probably linked to systemic inequalities in education (and would therefore never be discussed in American politics).
10. Have writing and rhetoric fundamentally changed in the digital age? Or have they simply expanded in new directions, along with just about every other medium. Certainly technology has affected the way we communicate (blogs, for example), and I would say that it is a good thing on the whole. Locating "authority" is much more difficult, and that is definitely cause for some unease. "Editorial authority" has existed for centuries and has played an important role in determining what writing "matters," from journalism to creative writing to various forms of analytical and scientific writing. It has shaped discourse and given us a sense of order in how we think about things. Now all of that is under siege. Individuals are in a position to become "authorities," in the sense that they can get their message out quickly and cheaply. And all of us have to do more editorial filtering on our own, so that, on a very basic level, we don't give our bank account numbers to fictitious Ugandans. But I think it's a good thing because it demands more engagement on the part of the individual, and because authority in the most constructive sense only gains validity when it is challenged.
No comments:
Post a Comment