What’s The Point of Writing?

The 2 most vital books that influenced my writing are Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. I’ve additionally been influenced by studying great prose stylists like Bertrand Russell and Will Durant, in addition to by a graduate faculty mentor William Charron, who compelled me to rewrite my grasp’s thesis about ten instances. I generally suppose he overdid it—in search of perfection in a single’s writing causes paralysis—however he taught me the invaluable lesson of rewriting, which is the only finest secret to good writing that I do know of.

Sadly, the time constraints of researching and writing a weblog make it unattainable to repeatedly rewrite. I actually reread my posts and make fast adjustments earlier than publication, however I don’t have the time for the 5 or ten rewrites which are crucial for actually good prose. So it’s a tradeoff. I substitute amount for high quality, however I feel there’s worth in not over-analyzing a subject too. Stream-of-consciousness writing, being much less constrained than obsessive rewriting, permits one to proceed with out undue delay and is extra revelatory of 1’s true emotions.

Just lately I learn the interview about writing with psychologist Steven Pinker at edge.org. Pinker causes that writing is a psychological phenomenon, “a means that one thoughts may cause concepts to occur in one other thoughts.” However writing can be “cognitively unnatural,” in line with Pinker. For nearly your complete time there have been fashionable human beings, nobody wrote something till the previous few millennia. In truth, it’s an odd strategy to talk. You don’t see your viewers, you don’t know who they’re or what they know, and so they don’t ask you questions. It’s so completely different from face-to-face dialog.

Pinker thinks we write to attract one other’s consideration to one thing. “If you write … you must fake that you just, the author, see one thing on the earth that’s attention-grabbing, and that you just’re directing the eye of your reader to that factor.” This will likely appear apparent however take into account how a lot writing is completed to impress others or to guard oneself. So whereas we write for ourselves—to be taught and perceive—we write for our viewers too. To not impress them, defend ourselves, or shove dogma down their throat—however to see new issues with them. To level out issues that each the author and the reader might have missed.

Leaving a small a part of myself after I’m gone—a legacy of one of the best of me—motivates my writing. It’s inferior to actual immortality, and I should get a cryonics coverage, however it’s one thing. To go away a small a part of your self on this digital cloud. To go away your tender whisper within the air that somebody may hear.