The Art of the Essay

Preston Evans

ENGL 120W

04/13/14

A Sonic Spirit

I recently read an article that claimed teenagers today held little appreciation for music in comparison to the older generations as a direct result of quality degradation (the move from vinyl to digital) and of releasing singles in place of full albums (so people will only listen to one song by a band instead of their entire work). In a lot of ways, I guess I can agree. I mean, have you ever just sat down and listened to a record, a real record, all the way through? There is absolutely a difference not only in sound quality (it really is better) but also in the experience as a whole, as you actively flip the side over or examine the cover art and inserts. However, this article thoroughly irritated me not only because of the generalizing nature of the study (all “teens” were represented by a mere eight high school students), but also because music has been the most important piece of my life since I can remember and has had a profound impact on the person I am today. Music is able to capture the things that we can’t simply say or write, and for this it encapsulates a certain profound beauty.

The article includes a study that claims music, in the eyes of the youth, is used only as a sort of background for daily activities like doing homework or working out at the gym. For me, music will always take the foreground. I’ve played guitar since I was six years old, not to mention teaching myself a countless number of other instruments over the years. Music for me is more a way of self-expression, an outlet for bottled emotions that simply can’t be described by any specific word in written or oral communication. Music isn’t something to be put on simply for the sake of drowning an awkward silence or pushing you to your physical edge (although it does help), but rather something to escape into, something to lose yourself in entirely.

I think that people are able to relate to music because of its ever-evolving, increasingly accessible nature. There is music for literally every single circumstance you could imagine. Through music creation, songs, albums, and artists can represent elation, despair; tranquility, anxiety; oceans, deserts. No matter how you’re feeling or what kind of place you’re in, there is a sonic representation of it somewhere out there.

It’s also very interesting how music can also be reflective of a general time period as well as place. For example, today we have Dubstep, Trap, and other kinds of EDM genres that couldn’t have existed several years ago because the technology capable of producing these sounds didn’t exist. As we grow increasingly technologized in society, our music has moved outside the realm of humanly expressive instruments and more towards digitally expressive ones. Electronic music can be cool, but I must say I have a much greater respect for artists who work with more traditional, analog gear. I’m not saying I believe in Skynet or that a bunch of hyper intelligent robots will someday try to take over the world leaving the human race with no other option but to call in Arnold Schwarzenegger to go back in time and exterminate the person who started the whole mess in the first place, but I do believe that this technological shift has and will have a lasting effect not only on the music being made, but on the world that lives outside our headphones, too, and I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing yet.

So, music is representative, it is transformable, and it is transcendent. Similar to Argentine poet Juan Gelman, who used unconventional syntax and invented new vocabulary to express his emotions, music is a way of creating and manifesting the ineffable. I believe this manifestation of sonic emotion to be the most beautiful thing we have been given on this earth. For without it, I would surely go insane trying to express myself to others. Sometimes there’s just too much to say, and sometimes you can’t find the right words so they seem to bubble out of your mouth like drool. Music, at least for me, allows me to abstract myself from the boundaries and limitations of expression. It is the pinnacle of emotional discharge and a welcoming cathartic experience, like a warm hug from mom. But I guess that’s just me. I can’t really speak for the other young people out there that would rather participate in sociology studies.

In 5th grade AIM was everything.  It was helpful to AIM chat a friend to hangout instead of having to awkwardly talk to his parents first when you called the house phone (we didn’t have cell phones yet.)  It was also a great place to talk to girls from school.  AIM was really our first presence on social media.  Besides chatting people you also maintained a profile.  It wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as Facebook’s profile, it was just a blank space where you could type anything you want for your friends to see.  However, there was one incident I went through with AIM that made me discover the dark side of the internet as well as the dark side of myself.

It was a typical day after elementary school, two friends and I were at my house on the computer on AIM.  We were also gossiping about a kid we didn’t like, Brian.  My friend Jared was listing all the reasons we didn’t like Brian, as we laughed.  Jared was physically the strongest out of all ten males in my grade, and was known for fighting with people and always getting in trouble.  My other friend Ethan was liked by all the girls, but we secretly resented him because he was the perfect child who never got in trouble and followed all the rules.  I was somewhere in the middle, I stirred up lots of commotion, but pushed it just enough where I wouldn’t get in serious trouble.  When Jared was making fun of Brian, Ethan told Jared that he knew Brian’s password.  He told us what it was and Jared and I “hacked” Brian’s profile by writing disparaging things in his profile such as  “I like Caitlin but I’m just desperate,” “I’m ugly and suck at sports,” and “I suck at life.”  Of course, I was being my typical self and fully supported all of this but let Jared do the actual typing. In the back of my head this saved me the guilt of actually committing the act.  The next day at school Brian wasn’t there due to his embarassment.  He was an unpopular kid and I was the first person to brag at school (Jared did his fair share of it to) about hacking into Brian’s account.  “Perfect child” Ethan didn’t say a word.

No surprise, my parents received a call from Brian’s angry parents later that night.  My parents asked me “Ben did you do this?’  I replied, “No, Jared did.”  I mean he did physically type it so I felt like he was guilty and I was off the hook.  My parents were so angry, telling me this happened on my computer, and if I let Jared do this I was just as guilty.  The truth was I wasn’t just a bystander who should have intervened but didn’t; I was an active and willing participant.  Jared and I received harsh punishment from both parents and school administrators.  Ethan completely avoided all punishment for two reasons:  He didn’t brag and he had a spotless reputation.

Ironically, today I am much better friends with Brian than Jared or Ethan.  However, whenever he has me over I still feel a little bit of guilt for that incident 8 years ago.  Not just because I bullied someone and violated their privacy, but because I ultimately realized I was harming myself.  This was a major tuning point in my life.  It made me realize some really unflattering things about myself.  I was a bad influence on others.  I knew Jared was struggling with his academics and his life in general.  And too many times I was egging him on to do things that would just get him into trouble.  I started half the fights he got into as well as incited him to act up in class. I also realized that I had harmed someone weaker than me because it was I who was actually weak.  I went after Brian not because he was mean to me or had harmed me, but because he was too nice, too gentle.  He was one of the most sensitive, caring, and nice guys in the class (maybe why we are great friends today.)  Being one of the more socially dominant people, I could have easily protected him from others as well as myself.  But instead I attacked him and then bragged about it.  Looking back, I realize that the reason I did this was just to build my clout with others.  I was a well-liked kid, but it was never enough, I was always trying to impress my peers even if it meant hurting others.  I realize now that that my need to impress others was not confidence but insecurity.  Lastly, I learned that I was not always honest with myself.  I always talked the talk, but never walked the walk.  I encouraged the “hacking” but then after the fact convinced myself that I was merely a passive bystander because I didn’t physically do the typing.  It took me along times to come to terms with the fact that I was an active participant because my ego got in the way.  I think that’s what I truly learned from this experience: My ego shielded me from taking responsibility and facing insecurities.  I finally learned that to change I would have to harm my ego in order to save myself.

Hey guys, I, like Andrew, also know this is late (if you weren’t swamped with exams this week LUCKY YOU!) but if you have any feedback it would be much appreciated!! Thanks!

Most of us, who are aware of a craze currently sweeping pop culture, have heard the name George R.R. Martin. He is the writer of the fantasy novel series A Song of Fire and Ice. Most of us have also heard of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss who adapted these books and wrote scripts for one of HBO’s most popular hits Game of Thrones. Despite not having read the books or maybe even seen the series we know their names. Generally we know who writes books, and we know who writes TV Shows and Movies, but there is a completely unknown genre of writers: anonymous Internet writers. These authors go unknown, however their writing is some of the most influential in our lives. Their anonymous Internet writing is some of the most important writing because it is completely integrated in our social media, our quest for more knowledge, and our overall entertainment.

With the season 4 premiere of Game of Thrones approaching, I realized I had completely forgotten what had happened in not only in season three, but seasons two and one as well. This is where the beauty of anonymous writing comes in. With one click of a button I immediately found an entire website devoted to the land of Westeros titled “A Wiki of Fire and Ice.” Not only was I able to find an extensive background on every character, whether they be a main one or appeared once, but an individual summary of each and every episode that has happened. But one thing I was not able to find was the author. Someone, probably multiple people in the same manner Wikipedia is written, cohesively and concisely summarized everything I needed without receiving credit for his or her hard work. To them I am incredibly grateful for reminding me that Khaleesi will always be the mother of dragons and that John Snow knows nothing.

Besides anonymous writers fueling my obsession with Game of Thrones, they have created another website that has become integral in popular culture: BuzzFeed. In particular, these writers have provided me with endless entertainment in a subsection called BuzzFeed Quizzes. Without these anonymous writers of the quizzes I would have never known that the Mean Girls movie character I am most like is the girl who looks like Danny DeVito, I would have never known that on a scale of one to ten my devotion to pizza is “extreme,” and I also would have never known that as far as presidents go I am most like John F. Kennedy. Obviously, these do not add anything to my wealth of knowledge, nor are they particularly accurate (I really hope I do not look like Danny DeVito). But they do provide for countless house of entertainment. So for that, I silently thank the anonymous writers of BuzzFeed for constantly putting a smile on my face.

Then there are the informational writers on social media. Obviously the writers of articles are known, but how I personally find out about these articles is a bit different. I do not follow that many people on twitter; I mostly follow TIME, CNN, E! Online, and websites like that. With a quick scroll through my twitter feed I can find the most pressing and interesting headlines of the day. In less than 140 characters, I can generally know what is going on in the world or I have the option of further investigation. However, no one signs his or her names to these tweets. The tweeters are anonymous. And again, I thank these authors for making my days a little more insightful.

But why do these people write without reward? Do they know how much entertainment they provide millions of people? I think they are the unsung heroes of the literary world. And of course, some may argue that this writing is unimportant and the real heroes are people like Hemingway of Fitzgerald. But I think you would be lying if you never did a quick Wikipedia search to find out an unknown fact or read and maybe even participated in some online fan-fiction blog. So I urge you to keep in mind the next time you take a BuzzFeed quiz or read a funny tweet that these people are writing for your pure enjoyment without gratification and that is what makes them a literary hero.

http://awoiaf.westeros.org

http://www.buzzfeed.com

http://www.twitter.com

Hey guys, I know this is late, but I would really appreciate any feedback you have! Thanks!

We’ve reached a cultural zenith in music. People have constant access to a huge quantity and variety of music. Yet the broadening of music was accompanied by a shallowing of musical criticism, which is less concerned with the music itself than ever before.

Instead, the focus of music criticism becomes the history of artists, their influences, and the cultural trends they signify. Of course, this is all in fierce contention between music geeks. To give a taste, the Daily Beast featured an opinion piece from critic Ted Gioia lamenting the lack of music theory in music criticism. As he sees it, “music criticism has turned into lifestyle reporting.” This might sound elitist and pedantic. It does to other critics; in response, Grantland contributor Steven Hyden quipped, “do they really want record reviews to be more pedantic and inscrutable?” but I see Gioia’s point. Music criticism today has become about so much more than the music, to the detriment of the art and its audience.

Music website Pitchfork was founded in 1996. Within a decade, it had become the foremost voice in indie rock, an ever-expanding genre that dominated rock music in the late-00s much like alternative did in the 90s. Pitchfork then and today was notorious for being an indie rock “kingmaker:” a “best new music” rating can, on its own, jump start the career of an unknown artist. Look to indie giants Arcade Fire or LCD Soundsystem for examples. Pitchfork’s clout has not gone unnoticed. In a “review” by literary magazine n+1, the mechanism of Pitchfork’s ascension is described. Pitchfork based its success on music reviews, unlike older publications like Rolling Stone that focus on articles. As one of the first online music sites, they were able to take advantage of online archiving to create a huge base of reviews over the years, and Pitchfork seems to acknowledge this role in its success: they call themselves not a magazine, but “the essential guide to independent music.” To understand the site, you really have to read a review, but I’ll give a shot. Here’s an excerpt from the review of dance-indie band Reptar’s 2012 Body Faucet:

“But want to know what band’s been most consistently holding the Classic City down for the past decade? Not R.E.M., they were coasting on cred even before they went defunct. of Montreal? Please, you’re thinking too hard. Drive-By Truckers? Definitely a contender. But the answer here would be jam-band warhorses Widespread Panic.”

The rest of the review sits somewhere between a bizarre critique of fraternities and an exercise to see how many Athens GA venues the author can name-drop (four). And don’t worry if you don’t know at least one of the bands listed here: this is intentional. This sort of needless name-dropping is characteristic of a Pitchfork review. As n+1 notes, the “signature style” of Pitchfork is to tell you the “cultural company” a band is meant to keep. In other words, they tell you whether the music is cool or not.

This strategy requires a bit of ethos, which is why Pitchfork’s MO is to give the allure of learned good taste. This explains the manufactured veneer of a “guide” to music, bolstered by thousands of reviews, rated on a 100-point scale; the band name-dropping; the venue name-dropping; the constant smugness. n+1 suggests that Pitchfork doesn’t allow comments on its website because if they did, someone would call them out on their bullshit.

Overall, it’s depressing. I see why Gioia felt compelled to say something. When the writing becomes about the author more than the subject of the writing, there’s a problem. It becomes useless; it tells us nothing novel or perspective-changing about the music or whatever the subject is. More so, it becomes boring. When the writing’s purpose is to establish the author’s credibility, the purpose of writing, communication, is lost. Such a writer wants to separate himself or herself from the reader. The purpose should be to reveal knowledge to the reader: to connect with them as directly as possible. This is why Hyden is wrong. Music criticism is inscrutable not because it is technical or advanced, but because it has become an endless chain of the posturing of critics, the reduction of bands to musical influences and trends, and the commercial realities of the music industry. This seems to be a trend in today’s media: writers are more concerned with establishing their credibility and posturing than presenting the issue in a clear and thoughtful way. Some way call doubt the characteristic essence of an essay, but it can be hard to find sometimes. Ambivalence doesn’t get you page views.

Fortunately, this style of writing is self-defeating. As indie rock has moved into the mainstream, the dull predictability of the reviews is coming to light. Pitchfork now looks less like a connoisseur’s music encyclopedia and more like a corporatized rubber-stamp apparatus.

Writing is not easy.  The reason I signed up for Intermediate Composition was because I wanted to become a better writer.  I don’t want to become a better writer because it is useful for jobs or in order to write cover letters, I actually really like writing for enjoyment as well as a form of expression.  Writing so much for this class has helped me reconsider what it means to be a writer and how to write.  Writers need to be compulsive, creative and slightly narcissistic.

The act of writing is an act of creation.  It is about making a piece of art from a blank piece of paper (or computer screen.)  One does not necessarily need to think outside the box, but one has to be a creator.  Especially in this class, with very vague prompts, one has to be able to have his or her own unique idea.  Even if the topic is not that original, a successful writer is creative enough to frame it into something unique or at least present it a new way.  How does one be creative?  I do not consider myself naturally creative but I have a system that stimulates my creativity.  Although I often write papers the day before they are due, I start thinking about them the moment the prompt is assigned.  I do the best thinking when I am laying in bed and my mind is clear.  If I am stuck, I google the topic, not to take others’ ideas but just to do some reading which gets my mind flowing.  My first draft is 100 hundred percent creation and zero percent mechanics.  After I have satisfactory with the idea part of my paper then it is time to move toward revision.

Creation is essential, but is not all encompassing.  A good writer has to be compulsive.  A good writer has to be obsessive.  When a writer puts his ideas on paper they are often not polished.  To truly write a good essay the writer must revise, revise, and revise.  Obviously other school work prevents unlimited revision, but there was not a time where one of my earlier drafts was ever better then a later draft.  Although I often don’t do this, I have noticed that the few time I revise the next day, my essay is much better.  The mindset of a reader and writer are different.  After you write, it is hard to switch to a reader’s mindset.  Revising the next day allows you to take some time away from the draft and read it from a reader’s perspective.  There are so many times when I thought I was being clear as a writer but realized that a reader would be left confused by what I was saying.  I personally think it helps to print out your paper wile revising because I like to write all over my paper.

Lastly, writer’s need to be slightly narcicistic by nature.  Someone who thinks anyone else is concerned by what they think is somewhat narcisitic.  Writers are the ones who would rather be heard than to hear.  It has been said for a salesman to be successful he must believe in what he sells.  Than for a writer to be successful she must believe in what she writes.  It is obvious when someone writes to write versus when someone writes because they are passionate about something.  It helps when you are writng about something you believe in.  Although they don’t want to come off as arrogant writers need to believe that they are right.  To be a writer one needs to be able to take criticism for both ideas and writing style.  Someone who is always seeking external approval or is afraid of offending should not be a writer.  The point is not to strive to be offensive, but to not be afraid to offend others, and ultimately to be rejected.  Writers cannot fear rejection or failure.

As I have learned this year, being a writer is not easy.  It takes a certain person to write.  That person must be creative, compuslsive and even narcicistic.  A writer needs to be able to create, revise, and own their work.  They must come up with an idea, articulate it, and deal with all the praise and criticism from their work.  Being a writer is no easy task.

Many adults can recall their emotionally scarring handwriting classes in elementary school.  Teachers passed down the new cursive to students in thirty-minute to hour-long lessons; little children sat in classroom, practicing writing the letters again and again, but still received an F on cursive test in second because they couldn’t master the curly Qs and Zs.  However, such situations become rare for younger generation, because penmanship lessons themselves has become rare.  When typewriters were invented and became the wave of the future, penmanship time was significantly reduced, and finally in the 1990s, when computers gained popularity both in the office and at home, teaching handwriting became even less of a priority.  Today, handwriting lessons are a small part of the syllabus.  A 2008 study on elementary school teachers in United Sates showed that while nine out of ten teachers cover penmanship in their lesson plans, they spend less than fifteen minutes on it per day on average.  Many kids now spend much time in the computer lab conquering keyboarding with typing games.  The death of handwriting is an inevitable future, and for many nostalgic people, they have to accept the vanishing of many human cultures.

Although many advocates attempt to restore the art of handwriting, schools have their justifiable reasons for the decline of penmanship lessons – the growing necessity of a quicker, neater, more accessible way to communicate thoughts, such as keyboard typing.  “We need to make sure they’ll be ready for what’s going to happen in 2020 or 2030,” said Katie Van Sluys, a professor at DePaul University, “I am not sure students have a sense of any reason why they should vest their time and effort in writing a message out manually when it can be sent electronically in seconds.”  Besides some sentimental concerns, typing outscores handwriting in many ways.  “If everything we do still had to be done by hand, there would not be enough hours in the day,” says Ruth Hodson, registration manager for Peterborough City Council.  Indeed, by typing words down and print papers out, we can save much time to focus on other things and we no longer need to figure out those scribbly written words.  There are some more reasons that we turn to keyboarding other than its clearness and convenience.  For many left-handers, it could be a torture to learn handwriting because often they were forced to write with their right, while their “bad” hand was tied down.  With the universal use of computers and keyboards, the gap between left-handers and right-handers may become smaller and smaller, and maybe someday, left-handers will not be marked as “minority”.

Maybe the schools’ decision to pay less attention to handwriting is not only a compromise to students’ life which is full of text messaging, e-mail, and word processing, but also a compromise to the standardized test.  For teenagers, in 2011, the writing test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress will require 8th and 11th graders to compose on computers, with 4th graders following in 2019.  For international students with English being their second language, the whole process of TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) test relies on computers.  For college students, according to Vanderbilt University professor Steve Graham, who cites multiple studies showing that sloppy writing routinely leads to lower grades, even in papers with the same wording as those written in a neater hand.  I suspect eventually College Board will accommodate to the high-technology society and come up with SAT tests that allow students to type their answers and essays, since it will be more convenience for both test takers and graders.  According to Professor Graham, the fear over the decline of handwriting is distraction from the goal of improving students’ overall writing skills.  The important thing is to make students proficient enough to focus on their ideas and the composition of their writing rather than how they form the letters.

Paula Sassi, a certified master graphologist, describes the disappearing of handwriting in a different way, “just like when we went from quill pen to fountain pen to ball point, now we’re going from handwriting to keyboarding.”  People will still exchange their thoughts and ideas, just through different media, and that’s the trend of human history.  Maybe in the future a student will write an essay titled “The Death of Typing” – “I remember the days when I sat in front of a computer; letters popped up in the screen as my fingers danced on the keyboard.  But they are all gone now…”  However, it is a little frightening to think about that the society described in Fahrenheit 451 will come true even without a tyrannous government, and it is a little disappointing to think about that what we will leave to our future generations is plenty of date but very little of our personalities.

“Hi lol how ru? How was your wknd?”

“O grl, my wknd was gr8. Hbu?”

“Cool. Mine was perf 2 lolol”

I was talking to my friend once, and our conversation was rather similar to the one above. I remember thinking that we were being pretty silly, as we normally don’t talk that way to each other. But then, I thought about how funny it was that we were even able to talk to each other in this made-up language of abbreviations and chat lingo. I found it interesting that humans found a need for speed big enough that we created a language of abbreviations for our convenience and efficiency. How did we get here?  Society is filled with people in a hurry to move on to the next thing. We are always busy, and we need to be as efficient as possible to maximize the amount of time we have in a day to complete all of the tasks set in front of us. We created abbreviations and chat lingo to help us do everything we want to do as fast as possible while still allowing us to be able to get our meanings across to people efficiently and effectively. However, this abbreviated language leaves us with so many unanswered questions, such as, “What actually happened this weekend?” or “How was it great?”

Now you might be thinking: wow, humans suck. We don’t even allocate enough time to type to each other simple words, and we shear off a few extra letters in words just to be more efficient by a couple seconds. But let’s consider the opposite. What if your friend was describing his weekend, and he said, “My weekend was so amazingly, wonderfully, fantastically, terrifically super-duper! I have to tell you everything. I mean, everything!! The minute I got let out of class on Friday, the sun was shining and the birds were chirping and the leaves were changing colors and I was smiling and, oh man, that was just the beginning! There is just so so SO much more to be told…” Now, I don’t know about you, but if I had asked my friend how his weekend was and got a story that lasted for hours, I probably would have regretted asking anything at all because I didn’t want a gargantuan response when a simple lilliputian one would have sufficed.

That leaves us (or maybe just me) with a dilemma, doesn’t it? We don’t want the abbreviations because we would be deprived of details but we also don’t want all of the full-formed words either because that would be tmi. So what should we do then? The obvious answer would be to balance the two opposing forces out and make sure that there are not too many abbreviations and not too many excessive details. But can you imagine always reading sentences formed like this: “My wknd was splendidly wonderful bc I got to see my BFF and we srsly had the best time evr!!”

That doesn’t seem to sound great either. Instead, the solution between chat abbreviations and full form words is not simply in the balance of the two, but rather it is in the situations and appropriateness in which one or the other is used. Chat abbreviations are more apropro for conversations between friends, online chatting, or whatever needs the efficiency that comes with using chat abbreviations. Chat abbreviations are inapropro for situations that need full-fledged details or specificities to get the complete and whole meaning across to the next person. For example, I would not necessarily talk to my professors using chat abbreviations, nor would I necessarily talk to my friends using full-formed words all of the time. Similarly, when I am reading articles for class, I am reading full-formed words, while if I was scrolling down through Facebook, I might see a bunch of lols, hahas, and brbs.

Maybe the increasing prevalence of chat abbreviations is a result of the increase in social media or online blogs, but more importantly this difference in writing styles could be a result of how society is moving towards the fast-paced, higher efficiency lifestyle that comes with the usage of abbreviations. It is not even just a phenomenon in social media among teenagers. The days of the week have abbreviations, as well as street signs, professional titles, class names, and so much more. Chat abbreviations definitely serve people through text messages or social media communications, but the bigger picture is that abbreviations have been in use for years, if not centuries, and chat lingo has been an inevitable phase of writing.

Abbreviations in case you were thinking “wth???”:

Lol = laugh out loud

Lolol = laugh out loud out loud

Perf = perfect

2 = too

Ru = are you

Wknd = weekend

Grl = girl

Gr8 = great

Hbu = How about you?

Tmi = too much information

Wth = what the heck???

Since the beginning of time, humans shared stories. They shared legends, warnings, history. Every bit of what we knew was passed down, by word of mouth, to be learned and utilized by the next generation and the generations after that. Language was the very thing that set us apart from our earlier ancestors and the thousands of other animal species that have ever been in existence, It allowed us to pass down these bits and pieces of information in the most basic manner. And in this way, the spoken language served its purpose for thousands of years until it was no longer sufficient to carry on the complexities of newer societies. Thus, the written language was born.

Roughly 9,000 years ago, the first evidence of the existence of a writing system appeared. People needed a way to keep track of property and settlements in early agrarian societies. What started as counting tokens became symbols that led to cuneiform, the earliest script. Then, the Egyptians’ picture writing developed into one of the earliest forms of the alphabet—hieroglyphics. After dozens of other scripts, we arrived at the writing system we employ today. The written language has since revolutionized the way we, as humans, can thrive and advance.

Written language has allowed us to accomplish things that we never would have otherwise. It allows us to reach a larger audience, connecting us to people in almost any part of the world. With oral communication, only those immediately near could learn of the stories you had to tell. Unless you travelled the Earth, there was no way of sharing your lessons and wisdom with other communities and cultures. Thus, all over the world these different experiences, stories, and legends existed in their own “bubbles,” almost never coming together. In this way, we, as humans, lost a lot of potential for growth and innovation. They always say two (or three or four) heads are better than one. The combined accumulation of knowledge from different peoples all across the globe could have given us what we needed to make discoveries and realizations long before we were actually able to separately. After the employment of written language, a small group of people could bring large volumes of essays and written stories to far away lands to share what they had found. After the development of modern technology, sharing information was as easy as a few keystrokes on a computer. In this way, the writing has allowed for collaborations exponentially faster and easier and more far reaching than could have happened without writing.

Perhaps even better, writing allows us to document our history in ways that oral communication could never. What writing offers, that oral communication doesn’t, is permanence. Save for lost or destroyed texts, what is once written will remain there for all future generations to see and learn from. What is spoken can be changed, misunderstood, or lost altogether. What you do not pass on, and what those you speak to do not remember, will be lost forever. Those stories and experiences will never again become available to those who follow. George Santayana, a Spanish-American philosopher and writer once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” By documenting the successes and mistakes of the past, we can learn and do better in the future. Rather than repeating all the failures of those who came before us, we can learn from their mistakes and reach higher goals than they could have. In this way, documentation of the past allows us not only to learn about where we came from and how people lived and worked years before us, it allows us to grow and succeed by circumventing the mistakes that those before us made.

Though nowadays writing seems like an instinct, a reflex that has become engrained in us through years of practice and usage, we must remember its roots. The road to the creation of writing was a long one. It took years, cultures, and countless bouts of trial and error to create the system that we now use every day. It is important to remember this and to appreciate all the doors writing has opened for us and the ways we have grown that those before us could never have even imagined.

Sources:

http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm

Everyone has been forced to write a paper on a prompt that they felt they have no connection to or interest in. I don’t remember how many times I’ve sat for hours in front of my computer screen, trying to just think of theses for papers in my history classes. How was I supposed to feel about the impact of a battle on the economy of a faraway nation? Or the implications of the cultural values of a people from centuries in the past? I knew these were important matters, but the problem was that I just wasn’t feeling it. Writing about history frequently felt like a chore because the prompts were often too specific for me to take the essay in my own direction, and my resulting essays often seemed monotonous as I would review them before turning them in. I wasn’t a history person, I was a science person; I would much rather have preferred to write about how pathogens can mutate, and what implications this has on the medical field.

It is well-known that writing is most effective when it is sincere. When an emotion is truly present in writing, whether it is happiness, sadness, frustration, or anger, it is usually easy to tell through the vocabulary choice, sentence structure, and metaphorical devices, all of which contribute to the tone and style of the author’s voice. Even if the emotions are so strong that they may be considered to equal the point of madness, such as is present in the poets mentioned in Joshua Mehigan’s “I Thought You Were a Poet,” there is honesty and sincerity that allows for writing to come naturally and powerfully, resulting in a lasting impression upon the readers—and that’s what a goal of writing should be: for the reader to retain the information so that he or she may be affected by the writing in some way. However, when the feeling is not there, it’s hard to get even the technical things right; it’s not easy to find the right words to describe something that we don’t even believe in, and it can be difficult to even formulate what we are trying to say. Phrases end up coming out awkwardly or complicatedly in order to make up for this lack of passion, and instead, the writing becomes dull, superficial, and monotonous. After all, how can we interest readers when we don’t even feel interested by our own words?

While it is important to be confident in your true feelings in writing, it’s also important to doubt your thoughts, as Phillip Lopate stated in “The Essay, an Exercise in Doubt.” Forcing yourself to think about what you feel, and questioning why you feel this way allows for further development of ideas. I think that every thought, no matter how absolute, could use some doubting because each idea is connected to so many other ideas in so many ways that there is always more information to be gleaned, more logical support and evidence to be found. But how do you doubt your own thoughts if you already feel so sure of yourself? This can be done in many ways; reading about opposing viewpoints or controversial topics and getting to know other perspectives can provide a means to find flaws in these ideas, in turn strengthening your own ideas. Or maybe you can find something that changes your own viewpoint on a particular issue; after much speculation, you might find a flaw in the thought process, a better alternative idea, or a completely opposite viewpoint altogether. Ideas may change, but this doesn’t mean that it is no longer your own thought; it just means that the thought has been thoroughly self-scrutinized and a deeper level of understanding of your thoughts and yourself has been attained.

The process of effective writing is difficult. It requires honesty in emotion and beliefs, as well as a certain hesitation in these same ideas; while it is important to be certain of how one feels about the topic of the piece of writing, it is also important to be aware of the validity of one’s viewpoint, and possible opposing perspectives. Above all, it is essential to present one’s ideas so that they are lucid and meaningful to the readers through sincere and carefully questioned writing. Writing not only communicates ideas, but also generates new ones, as different readers interpret words in different ways.

My dad doesn’t just read a vast collection of Science-Fiction novels. He also writes them. Well, one and a half of them to be exact. He’s not well known for them; you wouldn’t recognize his name. In fact, he has never even gotten one published. He sent his one finished one to Michael Crichton’s publisher. Only Michael Crichton’s publisher. But still, the novels occupy a large amount of his time and energy. And even though nothing has really come of the hours except for a novel read by a maximum of seven people, The Immortality Gene is one of the things my dad is most proud of in his life. He is living proof that you don’t need to be famous for the things you work hard in, or even really show anyone, for you to count them among the most important things you’ve accomplished.

I’m not really sure what my dad’s novel is about. I tried to read it, and don’t get me wrong, it was really good. But I was eleven, and I didn’t really understand the concept of genetics. It turns out genetics seems to be a pretty important subject in a book called The Immortality Gene. However, seeing as my dad spent ten years of precious after-work time with the glow of the Microsoft Word reflecting off his eyes, I knew there was something in those 500 pages that mattered.

After ten years of writing, he finally finished. I can’t imagine that feeling: working on something for ten years and finally typing that last word. Obviously, he did about a year or so of editing after that, but the bulk of it was done. I don’t even think he wanted to send it to anyone. My dad is that weird mix of personalities that throws socks around the room and can’t make any food other than oatmeal, but is a perfectionist when it comes to anything work-related. I don’t ever think he would’ve thought the book was good enough to send to a friend, let alone a publisher. But that’s what wives are for right? My mom made him print out all 500 pages and send it to at least one person. My dad chose Michael Crichton’s publisher. Michael Crichton is one of the most famous Science-Fiction authors in the world, if you didn’t know. The Immortality Gene was good, but not that good. The publisher decided to pass.

I think my dad didn’t really want the book to be published. Evidently, someone wouldn’t like it, and they would probably insult it. Probably on the internet. I think subconsciously my dad knew that he didn’t want ten years of his life, of his precious time, to be criticized. However, even though he never sent it out, he still talks about it all the time. I mean, all the time. God forbid you mention the name of his main character. You will be treated to a two-and-a-half hour synopsis of the plot and any potential plot twists that even crossed my dad’s mind. Obviously, my dad is proud of this book.

People don’t need to be aware of your creations for them to be good. You don’t need to be a best-seller to be proud of your book. You are your own worst critic. The number of un-published authors, un-signed singers, and un-appreciated artists is astounding. There is definitely someone out there who is a better singer than Rebecca Black with a song that doesn’t revolve around a day of the week. And yet, Rebecca Black has a record deal and is releasing new music that millions of people are listening to.

It takes a certain kind of bravery to put your work out there for the world to see. You’ve poured your heart into this book, song, or painting. Tears might have been spilled, sleepless night might have been endured, and an inspiration black hole might have been pushed through. My dad spent a whole year on one page of his book (apparently his antagonist was having an identity crisis). Some people aren’t quite ready to hand their creation over to the cynics. They want to preserve the pride and positive feelings surrounding their hard work. Just give them a little time, and a little encouragement, and eventually the next Michael Crichton will come out to play.