An issue I am encountering while writing for this blog is the concern of repetition. If I ramble and touch on a couple of topics in one post, I’m not entirely sure about how to approach those topics again without seeming to repeat what I just said. I can use links, but this isn’t so clear cut and organized. I do want to eventually establish a more clear system of topics.
(Unfinished)
I don’t always know where to go when I write. There are generally two ways a written piece can go for me.
In the first direction, I begin to write by taking some time to lay a first good sentence. I consider it very important, because it is the anchor to which the rest of my written thoughts are attached. A successful first sentence opens a couple of doors, usually less than three. I can go in only a few coherent directions, and that first sentence acts as a limiter, building some necessary boundaries for the writing. I can’t abruptly start talking about how loud the radiators are in my apartment without veering in a confusing way away from what the topic is I am writing about. So, the first sentence funnels thought. Then I have to invoke some aesthetic rules to make sure the string of sentences I am writing flows in a usually unnoticeable, but nice sounding way. Avoid repetition of words (for instance, “I can/I can’t” are now locked away from use in this paragraph, as I’ve used them to their quota), vary sentence length and reading breaks. This narrows down the direction further. A paragraph begins to form in my head and it becomes a process of filling in the detail and then figuring out an acceptable transition point to the next paragraph.
In the other direction, I launch into a topic direction, and feel the flow of words relatively unbroken. Direction forms more spontaneously, as I draw from concepts I consider related. I really like plowing through a paragraph, laying out words at a good pace, but I tend to run into a snare part of the way through. I begin to lose track of where I want to go with the writing. Writing for myself, I don’t really care. I can follow my own train of thought pretty well, even returning to writing from many years ago (there is actually a cut off though, where I start to sense a disconnect with what I had been thinking). For writing intended to be read, it is not as simple. I lose track of my direction, and as a result, eventually face too many options. If I don’t have an initial, anchored topic, I can ramble myself into a place that starts to make less sense, because I go to far in a direction that loses touch with what I originally wrote about.
The most frequent result of the latter is that I stop midway through a paragraph, not knowing how to continue. There may be many ways I could continue, but not a clear way to eventually land at any one point. I might start writing about describing my own thoughts, and find I have walked into a different topic, unable to return to the original subject.
I don’t consider the unfinished writing to be a failure, but a broken direction or draft, to be finished later. I usually like what I was writing about, and so I won’t get rid of it, at least not immediately. Instead of keeping the unfinished writing unseen, I am going to post a lot of it. I’ll add a tag and a note to them to mark them unfinished, and hopefully get back to them at a later date.
(Unfinished)
That the narrator, myself, isn’t necessarily the author caused me, the author, to be a bit apprehensive about using a blog. I initially intended to post individual pages for each piece of writing, but the ease of use of WordPress was very attractive. I do still intend to use separate pages for some things, but I did realize that there is a value in this method and format. As I stated in the About page, a blog is not how I want all of the writing on this site to be interpretted, but the medium does serve useful functions. A blog does have a certain level of accountability, pressing against what I posited in the disclaimer about the disconnect between narrator and author. I am still feeling out the edges of where I want representation and when I don’t. There is a precedent for bloggers to be held to what they say. I would like to reserve the right to change my mind, or to argue something I don’t necessarily agree with.
One thing I do intend to do is customize this page. The previously formatted themes are very nice and all, but I would rather have my own lay out. Building a theme from scratch is on my list of things to do.
Another point my English teachers and professors always ended up making when a student made the error bears repeating here. Simply, the narrator is not the author. The two may seem entirely the same, and the author may retain that intention and right, but I don’t. I suppose this is all me, in different forms, and if you said that in an argument, I may end up agreeing, but I am not committed to that. The things I write are not a reliable depiction of my opinion. They may not have any bearing of truth or of my goals or plans or anything that I actually believe, at all. I prefer to remain a bit more transient and contradictory. This is my way of saying that what I say and write are not necessarily what I think, and even if they have some shred of truth or insight into my psyche, there is no guarantee that such insight is not about something in passing. I may believe something one day and not believe it another and there is no way I will hold myself to either, with the exception of whether or not I want to at the present moment.
The proper essay, the one I’ve been taught for years, always follows a standard pattern of development. Define your thesis, outline your argument.. As an English major, I’ve heard the same guidelines many times. I haven’t ever used them, though. The thesis was always the last thing to come to me, because I didn’t usually know where I stood on whatever issue I was arguing until I built built the logic trellises from point to point until it held up without weakness. What I had first was an evasive idea with lucid edges. A thought involving some loosely connected concepts and an emotional response. My intuitive processes would suggest that there was something graspable & worth articulating in that thought.
This is such an idea. Intuitive mechanisms are pulling me towards a collection of concepts that is worth annealing, writing them down from inarticulate clouds of concepts into transferable, digestible chunks, to be passed on to others. I don’t know the details, that is the purpose of writing it all out and building the links. I have an intention, that hopefully, through the use of the various examples and relevant items I post, will get through to you, the reader.
What I do know is this: my goal is to touch on a handful of topics, including creative processes, the viral quality of information, ideological immunization, persuasion, the absorption and integration of ideas, and the study of and possibility of creating agency enabling ideas.