The Writing Process

I think it’s hard to learn the difference between what’s important and what is just fluff. That has been one of my biggest challenges so far. We are taught from a young age that word count is important. I hate word count stipulations; I think they’re just another man-made stresser and I feel that they are both unnecessary and ridiculous. (Take that sentence, for example. I could’ve just said: I hate word count stipulations because they stress people out. That would’ve gotten the point across just fine I think, but I had to add extra fluff because I have to make a word count.) I understand their purpose: enforcing word count is a way to ensure that students are doing the same or almost the same amount of work. It is a leveler. But I hate word count just like I hate standardized tests, we aren’t all standard and not every individual’s writing needs are the same.

Suppose that a professor has proposed his/her class to write a thousand-word essay about the toils of adolescence. Consider also that he/she is asking her students to make this a personal essay, little to no background research necessary. Some students just might not have had that many toils! Others might have too many toils to fit into a thousand-word essay; they may need two thousand words. Neither of these groups of students will do their best work because they will either be filling their essay with unnecessary and ridiculous fluff or they will be cutting out important parts of their lives, trying to cram in all the terrible goings-on of their teen years in too little space. It’s sabotage! Some things are wildly unimportant and word count helps the writer think a little more about what is and what isn’t—especially in the case of those of us who tend to write over the limit. But writing should just be writing and young writers should freely be allowed to write things down. Word count is like a turtleneck is like a very weak man strangling you all day long.

In writing, especially in my own, I think it is important to keep the main goal in mind. That sort of goes hand in hand with the thing I think I ought to learn about knowing what’s important and what’s not. Digressions are important, necessary, healthy even. Sometimes they prove a point and sometimes they don’t. The ones that prove a point are the important ones. But depending on your word count (ugh, sigh, ugh), writers should keep in mind just how long any given digression is. Honestly, regardless of the word count a very long digression can make the reader forget what your main point is and a very short one can cave in on itself because it may seem just like a random sentence or two that likely would get cut in the editing process. I think what’s important to take away here is that word count sucks (but may or may not be a necessary evil) and that when writing one should keep in mind the goal and not use unnecessary words, even if (especially if) you’re just trying to meet said word count.

Surviving Together: A Brief Account of Living Vicariously Through The Next Guy

"What is it about stories—what are their particularities—that enable them to work as they do? More than mere curiosity is at stake in this question, because human life depends on the stories we tell: the sense of self that those stories impart, the relationships constructed around shared stories, and the sense of purpose that stories both propose and foreclose."   Arthur Frank

Storytelling is an ancient tradition, a practice that has been passed down from one generation to the next. It precedes spoken language. It cherishes custom and heritage. It provides windows into other realms. Most importantly, it exudes relativity and comfort. We tell stories in general for the same reason we write them: it allows us a lens with which to photograph the world one subject at a time. We've all heard people say stories are experiences, that they are meant to be read or heard so that we, as the reader or listener, can lose ourselves in them. Stories are much like the real life equivalent of Alice in Wonderland: we are able to fall down the rabbit hole and experience all the very real things without maybe actually experiencing them. Stories are like dreams.

It is very possible, in a sense, to get lost in a story; we do almost always want to know whats going to happen next. But perhaps more than getting lost in a story, we are getting found. Maybe we find ourselves in stories, and especially in other people's stories. There are always facets of someone else's life that will match your own; the whole thing will rarely be exact. The whole thing will even more rarely not divulge in its contents something that we, as readers or listeners, can relate to. Take the feature story about Joplin for example. It is likely that, besides the people who starred in it, no one has ever experienced this story quite exactly like it was told. Actually it is also fair, I think, to say that even the people who Dittrich profiled for the piece didnt picture things exactly like it was written down and not everyone there had the same perspective because we have to take into account that each individual in the cooler was understanding the situation in varying ways. That I think we can agree on. 

But I digress. 

How many people do you think read that feature that: have children that they care about and thought of them; had a dog, specifically a dachshund; have been through the toils of tornado season in the Alley; have been so terrified about something they werent able to move; have cerebral palsy; love beer; love Jesus; could imagine the one time they used their camera phone to take a video at a particularly inopportune moment and forgot it was filming; find themselves in situations where they feel like they can't breathe?  We tell other people's stories because we have a certain craving for figuring out our own unknowns through others' experiences. It helps us feel united. More than that, it provides a safety net for humankind. Relatable experiences make us prone to think if it turned out okay for that guy, it likely will for me too. We tell stories because they are applicable to our own lives in some form; this applicability makes them #relatable. It might be a particularly windy or rainy day. A tornado might hit. We might survive.