Clarity, Conciseness, and Nonbigwordednessocity

Lynn Z. Bloom's article "Freshman Composition as a Middle-Class Enterprise" actually points out a lot of useful guidelines for student writing, guidelines that make sense and that should probably be followed by students, teachers, and writers in general. I've often talked about accessibility in the texts that I read, and whether or not a text is accessible is determined by most of these factors, demonstrated by Benjamin Franklin, Polonius, and The Elements of Style.

It seems as though many academic texts that I read for class nowadays could use some of this advice. They are often not the most accessible reading materials, and many tend to violate these very basic rules of writing and discourse:

• Be concise: "Nothing should be expressed in two words that can be as well expressed in one."
• Avoid extremes: I'm often guilty of this myself, and it closely ties into having enough evidence to support a writer's claims.
• "Place yourself in the background"/"Do not inject opinion": This really depends on the kind of writing one is doing. If the goal is to remain completely objective and informative, then yes. But it's hard not to inject opinion if one is trying to persuade others.
• "Be clear"/"Avoid fancy words"/"Use figures of speech sparingly"/"Avoid foreign languages": Here's where I really wish certain academic writers should pay attention. We get it; you have a Ph.D., you're very smart, and you know several French and Latin words. But your audience might not. Therefore, you'd be writing over their heads. Simplicity is conducive to clarity, and if your writing is not clear, then you are a bad writer, if nothing else simply due to the fact that your audience cannot understand you. Blaming your audience for not being intelligent or esoteric enough to know what you're talking about won't help matters, either; the responsibility of clearing up confusion and making yourself understood rests with you as a writer.

As far as this debate between using and avoiding the first person and a more informal tone in academic texts, I think certain professors are opposed to this for the wrong reasons. This links back to clarity: if a student's audience consists of their peers, then this might be the most appropriate method of writing to get their point across. Obviously if students are expected to write personal literacy narratives, they would need to use first person pronouns, and it might be more appealing to tell their story in an informal way. It would certainly make other students interested in reading the text. Informality is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does have its place. It all comes down to audience.

So...what the hell am I supposed to write?

Chapter 3 of The Way Literacy Lives effectively describes our writing program here and has given me some useful insight as to why first year composition courses have this curriculum. The argument against Russell Durst's study and conclusions on FYC courses and how they should be taught brought up some important points about, not only objectivity in the classroom, but also the prompts for student papers.

I think it is important to emphasize the fact that no student--particularly those who are unaccustomed to thinking critically for themselves--should feel they are being "force-fed" any ideology, liberal or otherwise. It is not the role of the teacher to train students to think like him/her; rather, the teacher's responsibility is to train students to think, period. We merely give them the tools they need to express those thoughts. Therefore, we as teachers need to remain objective in the classroom, no matter what. We need to be careful about how our personal, political, or religious beliefs might influence the way we present ourselves as educators, as well as to refrain from letting any potential bias show.

That having been said, keeping those beliefs entirely out of the classroom seems needlessly limiting for a group of students who are just learning how to express themselves via writing. And while it is true that most freshman students on this campus come into the program without any real idea about what they'd like to major in or do for a living, not writing about any interests that could potentially be a part of their future careers seems weird. If our goal is to make students better writers--or more to the point, to show them that writing WILL be involved in their future careers at some point--then why not focus more on that aspect when teaching? It might not be beneficial to spend too little time on rather advanced topics such as these--ultimately doing too much and overwhelming students--this is true. But is it practical to focus on one topic and one topic only all semester long, a topic which is not only advanced itself for a freshman class, but that also applies to only a small percentage of students?

So what do we have our students write? What are they going to need to write in the future? How can we prepare them for this?

It seems that, if they are going to write for a career--and if they are lucky--it will be for a career that they are passionate about, perhaps even on subjects that they are interested in. Or, career aside, if they merely want to express themselves in a very formal, argumentative way, of course they will be passionate about what they are writing about. And if they are writing, they are thinking. This time, for themselves.

Dr. Jacobs Interview

Due to archive.org's dysfunctional website, I have so far only managed to post the first two parts of my interview with Dr. Kathryn Jacobs. Whenever their site starts working again, I'll post the 3rd part, as well as my interview with Dr. Derek Royal.

http://www.archive.org/details/Dr.JacobsInterviewPart1

http://www.archive.org/details/Dr.JacobsInterviewPart2

No Experience Necessary--Now Experienced

As promised, I personally took part in the No Experience Necessary Competition/Festival on Friday. And thank goodness for the prompt listed on the theatre website; I had not actually started work on the project until around 2 am. (Like I said, it's a good project for procrastinators.) But the prompt was open enough to allow a great deal of freedom, and yet specific enough to generate some really great ideas. So I developed the idea for the play in about half an hour and spent the rest of the time writing and working out the kinks.

Around 5 am, I submitted the play--shortly before passing out due to sleep deprivation. All things considered, I'm very pleased with the results. For those of you who have never experienced this feeling--and this was my first--as critical as we typically are of our own work, there is no comparison to seeing the words you've written, the characters you've created, coming to life on stage. Even if you think you've written crap, the actors and director make it wonderful. I really can't say enough about the director and actors; they really did a fantastic job putting something like this together, a quality production, and in such a short amount of time. They made my work seem like so much more than I thought it could be.

I'm told that there were six or so submissions for the competition, and three of them were chosen to be performed. It was really incredible to see what the other playwrights had come up with, how much different their works were than mine. Their talent was readily apparent, seeing it on stage. There was a small audience, but I feel they greatly enjoyed the event.

I sincerely hope that this becomes a regular event in the future, and that it grows little by little. If we can get this kind of talent from just the few who have submitted this year, who knows what dozens or hundreds of others can produce. It has been a wonderful opportunity for me to interact with other, very creative individuals and learn about a different art form. It was certainly worthwhile.

Westward Expansion

Last week I interviewed Jim Anderson from the Department of Mass Media, Communication, and Theatre in order to learn more information about his involvement in the Commerce Week on Writing. We discussed, among other things, the No Experience Necessary 24 hour Playwriting Competition and Festival. I mentioned previously what an incredible opportunity this would be--particularly for amateur playwrights who want to jump into this art with both feet--but I didn't realize how true this was until I participated in the competition myself. More on this to come.

Jim Anderson and I spoke for a long while about various concepts, primarily the art of playwriting and how it applied to the competition, but also about professors whom we were both familiar with and their merits, similar interests held by students in different departments, and how those interests often interact and coincide with each other.

This made me realize one very important thing: as we are now, as a university, we are too esoteric in our individual departments. We are quaratined from each other, only interested in our own localized enviornments, even if we often share a great many similarities with those in other fields of study. Once we become graduate students (the only experience I can honestly speak from), there seems to be a great deal of pressure for us to become more and more focused in our fields of study, rather than to continue exploring new areas--and god forbid, new buildings.

This, naturally, is not true of everyone; I've noticed a lot more interaction between faculty members and students from different departments than there has been in the past, and it pleases me to see this. To completely ignore what others are doing is detrimental to our academic research, as well as our overall campus enviornment. I am constantly surprised by how many people in other departments are working on the same sorts of projects or fields of study that I am; the obvious thing to do is to collaborate with them. And I only find out about these kindred spirits by getting out of the Hall of Languages when I can, interacting with other people that I'm not familiar with, finding out what interests them.

This is a very simple step toward broadening our horizons: if nothing else, just go to another building and hang out in their lobby for a while. See how people interact with each other, how it differs from what you're used to. I've spent the better part of last week in the Performing Arts Center, and without trying I've met several individuals who I can relate to on some level, people who I now consider good friends. After talking to them about the profound similarities in our interests and studies, I realized that I should've met these people a long time ago.

There's no reason to be partitioned off from people who we can collaborate with. I propose an assignment to anyone who reads this: make it a point, within the next week, to take some time and go to another building on campus. Then start talking to the people there. Find out something about them. You might be surprised by what you discover.

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley"

In celebration of creative writing, Jim Anderson and the theatre department are offering a one hour workshop on the basics and format of playwriting here at Texas A&M University Commerce. This is part of a competition known as the No Experience Necessary 24 Hour Short Play Competition and Festival, a very unique idea of coming up with an idea for an 8-10 minute play and writing it for submission the very next day.

I think that this is a wonderful opportunity for individuals who may not have much experience in playwriting to get their creative works out to the public very quickly and with more focus on creative spontaneity than over-preparation. As a sometimes-serious fiction writer, I know how difficult it is sometimes to develop a very elaborate idea over the course of several months or years and how much preparation is required for such a feat. Sometimes my best work comes from pressure to get something written by the very next day; it is often the motivation I need to get creative.

Also, this program allows people who may not be familiar with playwriting and who would otherwise feel put off by such a specific genre to be briefly introduced to it and very quickly get involved in it on a very creative level. As is suggested by the title, no experience is necessary to develop something creative and worthwhile, and a project such as this will likely produce a great deal of different sorts of plays from people who otherwise would not even consider writing for such a medium.

Over these 24 hours, there will be plenty of guidance. Participants may attend an optional 1 hour workshop on playwriting in PAC 100 at 4:30 pm, Thursday October 22. Afterward, at 5:00 pm, participants may go to the Theatre Department website to obtain a prompt and instructions, and they will write an 8-10 minute play based on this prompt. Plays should be submitted no later than 10:00 am on Friday, October 23, to Jim_Anderson@TAMU-Commerce.edu , a short enough time to put plenty of pressure on writers to get their works in, again, something that I encourage, as a procrastinator. The committee that will look at these drafts includes Jim Anderson, Dr. John Hanners, and award-winning playwright Gary Burton, who I've had the good fortune of taking a theatre course from. As a side note, if you ever have the chance to see Doorknobs, a play written by Gary Burton, please do so; it was hands-down the best play that I had seen that year, and well-worth your time. Gary's an excellent playwright.

Once the top 5 plays are selected, playwrights will be invited to attend rehearsals at 3:00 pm on October 23. At 5:00, doors open for festival. This quick process should be an excellent experience for those who either procrastinate too much or have little to no experience with playwriting. John Waters once said that a great exercise for film students is to read a story in the newspaper, make a film based on it that day, and release the film the very next day. While he was speaking primarily of the film being based on a concept that had only entered the consciousness of the audience very recently, the same concept could apply to these potential playwrights. Think about a potential concept, recent or otherwise, write a play based on it, and submit it for rehearsals the very next day; since it only recently entered your consciousness, it will be new and fresh, and generally more potent. If I have the opportunity to do so, I will enter this contest myself, and I encourage anyone else to do the same.

Who is a Writer?

Before You Read:
Do you consider yourself a writer? Why or why not?
What forms of writing do you use in your everyday life?
How do you feel that writing professionally differs from other forms of writing, if at all?

After You Read:
Has your opinion of what writing is changed after watching this video? In what way?
Can you relate to any of the interviewees and their opinions (for better or worse) on writing? Use specific examples.
Do you disagree with any of the interviewees’ views on writing? Explain why.