Advance English Week 1

Writing and Thinking

"Why is it that the words we write for ourselves are so much better than the words we write for others?"

    >Finding Forrester

• Joan Didion, an award-winning journalist and memoirist, explains the relationship this way: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means” (20). Until we try to formulate our ideas on paper, we simply do not know what we think. In addition, the very act of writing produces new ideas.
• Peter Elbow, a writing teacher, encourages his students to use writing as a means to an end: “Meaning is not what you start out with but what you end up with.... Think of writing then not as a way to transmit a message but as a way to grow and cook a message” (qtd. in Bean 20)
• Brenda Ueland: ".... Why fix their attention on the avoidance of mistakes? It just tightens them up, contracts them, and makes them dislike lessons. Moreover, when they are thinking so vividly about the bad notes that they are warned to avoid, they play them again and again, just as a man learning to ride a bicycle goes into the tree he is afraid of. To play a note truly, as the simplest person knows, your mind must be on the true note, your Imagination hearing it as you want to play it..."

Until we see our thoughts on paper, it’s difficult to see their strengths and weaknesses.

Move your writing down the ladder. Concrete, specific words communicate in a visceral, powerful way that translates abstract concepts into living, breathing realities for your readers 

GOALS

> Write non-stop for 10 min. Review.

>Use a similar approach to deepen your own understanding of an abstract concept. Begin by brainstorming a list of abstractions: 

• love
• freedom
• fear
• intelligence
• creativity, etc. 

Once you have a list of ten or more, select the one that interests you most. Now, list all the experiences you associate with the abstract concept you’ve chosen.

When I think of _______, I think of _______. (abstraction) (concrete experience) _____________ is _______________. (abstraction) (concrete experience)