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Revelations of a Post Writer: We Are What We Write
When you write a post, you tell us a great deal about yourself. It’s one of my favorite experiences on Ricochet—getting to know people through their writing, not just learning more about a topic. Did you realize how much you tell us about yourself when you write? If not, let me tell you how you reveal who you are.
One of the first things I notice about a writer is your “eloquence factor.” There are some people who have a gift that I simply love. Their words are linked together like chains of daisies, colorful, graceful, and captivating. I don’t write that way, but I love to read others who do. It is like appreciating not only the utility of the thing, but the art that runs within and through it.
But there are others of you who are more utilitarian: words serve your mission to communicate and share with others. Your writing is often brief, to the point, with no words wasted. You are there to serve the idea, you, your computer, and the sentences you write. It is an honorable and practical endeavor.
And then there are those who are blessed with a bounty of both styles.
The writing style of some people seems to be driven by our favorite topics. Posts on the military, current events, controversies, religion, and philosophy seem to dictate how they are written and the length or brevity of what we have to say. Our passions may drive these posts, those times when we feel compelled to express an opinion, clarify a concept, or draw in the reader to elaborate on our ideas. In a sense, the poster and commenters write together, seeding additional ideas, watering, and pruning the topic. We share an enthusiasm for the topic and want to build it together, like a beautifully designed building or a colorful tapestry. It becomes not just a post, but our post.
Finally, you often tell us, directly or indirectly who you are. Our curmudgeons are often endearing and opinionated and we treasure them. Some of us are extremely curious and ask for lots of input. Some of us are set in our opinions and are mainly interested in dueling with ideas. Many of us treasure knowing more about others’ lives, experiences, struggles, and victories. And many do their best to be as private as they can for a multitude of reasons. The motivation to be private also tells us about you.
Ultimately, though, a writer reveals himself or herself: we learn about ideas, concepts, beliefs, and we learn them through you.
For those of you who write, keep writing.
For those of you haven’t, please write.
Tell us who you are.
Published in General
I write a ton for university (both because I’m a history major and because one of my Russian teachers, who I sometimes suspect may just be satan in disguise, forces us to write a 250 word essay in Russian each week), so Ricochet is my ‘happy writing.’ The topic is always my choice, as is the word limit, and I am free to pursue my own thoughts without having to worry about historiography or footnotes. And I never feel like I’m wasting time when I write for Ricochet because practice for an audience in writing is often the best practice at all (even if it is practice at 1 am on a Thursday). Funnily enough, I find it most therapeutic either when I’ve been writing a lot, or not at all.
I certainly don’t. Many people may think I share way more than I need to! Such is life .
Now that is interesting, @kirkianwanderer. I experience a sort of tension when I’m not writing on a given day. But then I’m not under the gun to produce a piece, either. Is it the freedom not to have to write that sometimes feels therapeutic?
IMHO George Orwell was the greatest writer of the 20th century.
He closed his essay “Why I Write” as follows:
“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.”
Go here for the essay in full.
I think sometimes it is, particularly because everything I write for school comes back with a grade and has to be in by a certain point; so maybe writing when I don’t have to feels like a cherry on top. I also tend to be under a ton of stress (our program, and uni as a whole, is notorious for it and even at orientation the professors in our course basically said most people just cope by going out and getting back out drunk on Fridays), so sometimes writing even after I’ve spent all day writing for a purpose feels good, because I know that I’m doing something I want to do that has no bearing on grad school, and when I’m that high strung just laying down and doing nothing isn’t going to cut it.
I always used to get a kick out of my kids guessing what I was like outside of the classroom based on my in class demeanor. I remember a kid once saying that “obviously” I lived in a loft apartment with neatly manicured carpet, a white couch, and copious amounts of tea.
I live on a small horse farm in rural Kentucky.
In short, we are not all what we seem to be.
I feel so sorry for college kids these days. I spent quite a bit of time helping my youngest with her essays for classes. She was not a reader, in spite of my efforts, and you could see it in her prose. I think it is quite typical of that generation (she was 30 in May) and the present generation might be worse. Thank god for the nuns that made us diagram sentences. I have written two books of non-fiction. I have read a lot of fiction and wish I could write dialog. I have a few favorite fiction writers, none considered “classic” these days. I tend to read fiction on Kindle but buy non-fiction in hard cover.
I disagree. Writing IS manipulation. We are all trying to communicate in such a way as to make an impression on the reader. I happen to think this is a noble endeavor.
There’s also the intent of writing fiction, particularly suspense and mystery.
Guess I have been going to wrong meetup.
This topic reminds me of a report I did in Jr. High School Civics class on the Supreme Court case “Schechter Poultry vs the US”. This was also known as the “Sick Chicken Case”. We had just moved into the area, so I was not very sure what sort of report was required.
Anyway, I gave my report – and as usual for me, it was just the basics. When I finished and went to sit back down, the teacher said the one word:
“Succinct”
Now, I didn’t know at the time what that meant, but interpreted it to mean that I started our SUCCessfully and then Sank. It wasn’t until later that I looked it up and found out it meant “concise” or “without wasted words”
I’m afraid that I’ve written that way pretty much ever since.
Ha great piece Susan. I marvel at how you find topics no one would think of writing on. I always look for your pieces and I also look for She’s. You two write such interesting essays. There are others I enjoy as well; I can’t think off the top of my head. But you and She are among the best.
Perhaps you are describing what I would call “persuasion”, which is a noble endeavor. Manipulation is an attempt to change opinions through obscuring the truth. Persuasion is an attempt to change opinions through revealing the truth.
Veritas Lux Mea
I would write more but I’m too busy changing costumes.
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
In another language I imagine 250 words is brutal! I think “Ricochet as practice’ is interesting. I am in a similar boat. I really want to “get out there” a bit more. But there are a lot of really smart and interesting voices here, and it doesn’t always feel like “practice.” In every sense? No. But, in some senses. I hope I get your sentiment. That also leads into my response to this comment: @susanquinn
For me, the therapeutic part is that there may be a few things I’d want to say or say differently that I had to leave out of a response or paper for a class. Ricochet is the place where I don’t have to self-censor as much. Also, for some ideas, I just need more time to think on, and those don’t belong in response papers or seminar papers, but Ricochet can be a place for that.
As a side note: One thing that’s interesting is that there is actually a bit of a substitution effect when it comes to class/Ricochet. Sometimes, ideas that are worth posting just get hashed out in seminar or standing in someone’s doorway and it’s “on to the next one.”
Most truthful and least surprising post of the thread.
A big part of the brutality is that we aren’t allowed to type anything, and Russians don’t write in print, only Cyrillic cursive. Even that wouldn’t be so bad (because the one complement I’ve ever gotten from that teacher is that I have “handwriting like a Russian child”), if she didn’t mark down for handwriting mistakes (like connecting the the line part of the ы at the top of the b rather than midway through). That’s definitely true for seminars and classes; a lot of times my ideas come from something that we went over in passing and made me think. (And a little bit of me has to tell myself it’s practice or I would be too scared to post).
This is from last year, so the syntax and grammar are far less complicated than what we have to contend with now, but a good example of the joy of writing in Russian.
Well, its a comment not a post but, hey, whatevs, man.
Fiction, as I understand it, can be plotted like a screen play. Especially mystery and detective fiction. The problem, as seen so well when William Butterworth got old and his son tried to take over, dialog is the hard part. I have lot of good stories, many are in my memoir, but dialog is hard.
This is true. I should’ve realized that you were a sticker for language. Apologies.
Don’t we all wish we could write like Christopher Hitchens! I would suggest adding Douglas Murray here too. He’s terrific as well.
Maybe we need a sesquipedalian thread.
For those of you too lazy to look up this word (or maybe you already know the meaning), sesquipedalian is a long word or one with multiple syllables. Maybe you and @suspira should co-write one. It sounds like fun. Just let me know if I’ll need a translator.
Eschew multisyllabic perambulations.
Ooohhh, I like it! But of course, we really shouldn’t, should we?
What do you mean?
Everything is hard until you devote yourself to it for a bit.
Dialog has always been easy. Maybe because I talk to myself. And take notes.