WRIT 2000: WHAT IS WRITING?

Now that I knew what different types of writing could be- academic or creative, I had to unlearn what I knew to define what I didn't know, that is, what writing really is and how do I define it.

“Only if we suspend the rather rigid conventions….”

A lot of times, writing is bound by genre or it was so at least in my head. I thought that there is a very “rigid” format that I have to follow and most times, there is. Rhetoric is important. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with rhetoric. In no way does that mean I can’t play around with concepts and be creative! Being creative is an art that seeps in from every corner, every nook, despite the nature of your writing.

“Like the physical act of writing or?” 

Writing can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. For the non writer soul, the word writing might entice an image completely different than someone who is a know advocate of the written word. There are so many different outlets of writing that everyone can have their own version of the same thing. Furthermore, it is very possible that someone might believe that writing is only the physical act of writing, someone like Ong, who’s idea of writing is just the physical act of writing and nothing more because all the internalization is according to him, oral. 

“She needed a hero so thats what she became” 

But writing isn’t just all that It’s os much more too. Writing for me fulfills this inherent need of expression, writing is my hero. It allows you to become whoever and whatever you want, in a flick of your wand (keyboard), you could be writing as the president or your favorite characters or even as someone who is dead. And the best part? Audience aside, it’s for yourself, it’s dictated by you. 

You can become who you want, when you want, however you want. 

“ *quotation in Intagram caption* “What’s living if you never pull down your shorts and slide on ice?” Well you know, saving your ass and sliding on ice so you don’t die of frost bite” 

Writing is humor, writing is voice. You express whatever comes to your mind when you think of something or someone, without judgement. The written word has way more respect than what’s spoken in that sense. 

Exhibit A : It’s easier to post about Trump than to openly say you voted for him at a dinner party. Somehow, talking about it at a dinner party becomes crass and is labelled as an inevitable result of your stupidity. Online, it becomes your opinion. 

Now you might think that I am advocating hypocrisy but I am not. What I am trying to say with this is that writing is cohesive and well thought out. When you are writing for an audience, you are conversing with someone whom you assume has a modicum of intelligence, hence making it harder for you to have no filter. There is a reaction you wish to evoke and that notion makes you think a fair amount before putting words to paper. It’s very hard to get heated and aggressively ignorant in writing. 

Writing is your filtered voice, esstentially. 

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” 

“You know it really doesn’t matter what the media writes as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass” 

“Handsome is as handsome does” 

“Come on come on turn the radio on, it’s friday night and I won’t be long” 

Writing is not just your take on society because fortunately or unfortunately, society shapes your take on society in a lot of ways. The pop culture you engage in, the people you are closest to, the books you chose to read, etc. Of course, you may pick and chose all these things but never will it be so that everything you associate with will endorse and believe in the same things as you. Either they will pull you towards believing in that thing or push you father away, hence contributing to shape your take in society in one way or the other.

We all know that writing is reflective. 

So in a sense, writing is this unbreakable cycle of your opinions being shaped and shaping other’s opinions because thats what forms what we traditionally like to call “society” 

What is writing? 

Writing is a lot of things. it’s this beautiful, messy and highly influential thing that means so many things to so many people. For an editor, writing might mean news or columns but for a marketing management firm, writing might mean strategy. 

In my first post of the quarter, I said that writing is spinning straw into gold and I couldn’t agree more. That still stands. Of course, my definition of straw and gold has changed. With all that we talked about in the course, with the definitions changing in the 21st century and all of that, there is a lot to be said on voice. Because I think orality is the straw, orality is your rough cut voice that you spin in gold to make it spread and stick, that you think about a lot before you express it because of the social media culture we are in and you want likes or whatever else. Writing is taking your voice and expressing it in a way that sticks and spreads.