Evaluative Essay: Writing as a Building
Writing is a building. This is the most applicable metaphor I can attribute to the process of writing. The foundation of all writing is meaning for without meaning, the work will crumble. Writing’s architecture is found in the graceful use of structure, grammar, and style. The balanced combination of foundation and architecture is essential in the creation of an inviting building, much like the synthesis of meaning and technicality is essential in successful writing. Throughout my semester as a student in my English 120 course, I’ve learned to properly distinguish and combine the creative and critical processes of writing.
The creative process of writing is about finding meaning where it might not originally exist. Meaning must be pure, requiring writers to abandon all preconceived social standards. It is impossible to find pure meaning unless you are limitless in your flexibility as a writer. Paulo Freire, a philosopher of education, believed that the contemporary relationship between teacher and student can be paralleled with the relationship between master and slave. In what Freire defines as “banking education”(Freire), the students’ creative consciousness is restricted by the educational system by premises like “the teacher knows everything and the student knows nothing”(Freire) and “the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined”(Freire). These ‘rules’, however, are illogical and only serve to inhibit the creative capacities of students by restricting their creative boundaries with rubrics and guidelines. I have found that the only way to find meaning is to exit the comfort zone of social conditioning writing and write freely.
Students are taught that they shouldn’t write unless they know what they want to say, forcing them to either have immediate meaning, or not write at all. However, as Peter Elbow, a Professor of English, would say, the writing process is an “organic”(Elbow) one in which you should “start writing at the very beginning-before you know your meaning at all-and encourage your words gradually to change and evolve”(Elbow). Meaning is not necessarily the words you start with but rather the idea that you end with. This kind of developmental writing allows for the natural formation of meaning. Free-writing is to writing as thinking is to talking. Once you have laid the foundations for your building, you can begin to design it.
In the second part of the semester, following the observation of the psychology of writing, we began to work on the technicalities of rhetoric and style. Rhetoric, as defined by Aristotle, is the observation of “means of persuasion”. All verbal and written rhetoric is enveloped by Logos, appeals to logic, Pathos, appeals to emotion, and Ethos, appeals to credibility. All writing must utilize at least one these appeals, thus all writing utilizes a form of argument whose end is to convince the reader of something. Though these rhetoric’s are necessary in writing, the extent to which they are used, and the circumstances under which they are used for, are completely unique to the writer’s discretion. An imbalanced, unclear, or overwhelming use of rhetoric can leave a reader unsure of your meaning. That is where, to my understanding, style comes into play.
Style, as I understand it, is the balance between meaning and rhetoric. What you want to say and how you want to say it must meet each other at the point of greatest clarity to the reader, who is the ultimate source of your writing’s effectiveness. William Zinsser, an American author, states that “clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon” (Zinsser). Vonnegut, also an American writer, says that “simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred”(Vonnegut). Many people believe that frivolity and structural complexity equates to good writing but, in truth, the less words you use to convey one idea, the clearer your writing is. In addition to simplicity of language, Vonnegut advocates sounding “like yourself” (Vonnegut) is necessary as long as you are being understood. The ultimate goal of the writer is to be understood. Effective writing is the balanced sum of meaning, rhetoric, and style.
Although I am sure I always instinctively agreed with such a premise, for I share a love of writing with these sources, I have been systematically conditioned to reject it up until my senior year of high school. My AP literature teacher, a woman who I believed to be fit to be an advanced professor of literature at Ivy League universities, began unraveling eleven years’ worth of writing conditioning. Naturally, I was resistant to the idea of such bare writing, but found that, with exposure, I much preferred a crisp, refreshing style to an over ornate work. I was lucky again when I was placed in an unconventional workshop class disguised as an expository English credit. This class exposed me to ideas by great writers and thinkers which were not taught to me for the vast majority of my educational career.
For example, the very first reading in the class was able to clearly define to me exactly what was wrong with my writing process. Carol S. Dweck, a professor of Psychology in Stanford University, presented me with the fixed-mindset and the growth-mindset. The fixed-mindset, conventionally taught to students, is the belief that “your qualities are carved in stone”(Dweck), “creating an urgency to prove yourself over and over”(Dweck) due to social pressures. However, the alternative growth-mindset is based on the belief “that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts” (Dweck). Although I entered the class with some experience in unconventional thinking, I was still largely suppressed in my creative abilities because of the fixed-mindset I had adopted. In order to become a better writer, I had to break myself from the social slavery of the educational system and redefine failure as an obstacle.
The overarching theme of this ‘writing’ class is that there is an interminable number of ways for people to express an idea. In addition to writing, I was exposed to multi-modal components of expression such as artwork, with a visit to the Frick museum, film, with a rhetorical analysis of the movie, Lincoln, and media, with a video adaptation of one of my essays. However, all these independent forms of expression share the essential core of meaning, rhetoric, and style in common.
Works Cited
Freire, Paulo. The Pedagogy of the Opressed. N.p.: n.p., 1970. Print.
Aristotle. Rhetoric. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Zinsser, William Knowlton. On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. Print.
Vonnegut, Kurt. "How to Write with Style." International Paper (1980): 66-67. Web.
Elbow, Peter. "The Process of Writing Growing." (1973): n. pag. Web.
Aristotle. Rhetoric. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Zinsser, William Knowlton. On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. Print.
Vonnegut, Kurt. "How to Write with Style." International Paper (1980): 66-67. Web.
Elbow, Peter. "The Process of Writing Growing." (1973): n. pag. Web.