Maybe this post should be entitled 'Response to Lamott and Orwell Based on my Own Experiences.' I guess that's just how it turned out.
First, Lamott. I found myself agreeing with this essay from the beginning. I know that when I write for school, I start out with an idea that I am relatively sure of, but while I write that idea changes; it isn't actually fully formed and solidified until that paper is done, so that first paper ends up being nothing more than a physical record of my thought process. The first draft should always be one's thoughts about a subject spewed onto paper, so that they can be gathered together into a comprehensible idea or argument and served up on a beautiful, polished platter of good writing in the second or third draft.
Now, Orwell. I found evidence to support Orwell's case in my own education. I have always been good at the sort of elevated but empty wordplay that Orwell complains about. It was inherited from reading modern books, as that is how I first learned to write. A young person learns by copying, so I copied phrases and big words and used them in my essays for school. These big words and tired metaphors were rewarded by teachers who were grading for coherent sentences and grammar, and not for ideas. This sort of writing blurs worthy ideas in a misty grandeur so that the reader cannot fully make them out. Which is a shame, because those ideas can be very valuable.
This is the second draft of this post, you can see the first draft in Lamottian style posted below as a comment. It seemed appropriate to the reading.
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2 comments:
For this draft I just typed whatever I was thinking whether or not it was pertinent. It practically cured writer's block.
I must wholeheartedly agree with both orwell and lamottee's essays. My response to lamott: I like this idea. If I am somehow able to summon up the willpower to do more than one draft—beyond just proofreading the first draft—I know that this will improve my writing a considerable amount. That is the least concrete sentence I have ever written. I can even support the theory with my own experience: almost every time I write an essay about something, I begin to form my true, fortified opinion about halfway through the paper. It seems to me that The first draft should be your thought process, brought to tangibility. That way, you can get your thoughts spread out onto the paper, get them all out, so that the second draft can be focused on serving those thoughts up on a beautiful, polished (double entendre!) platter of good writing.
Orwell's writing itself proves how effective the language could be if the fixes that he prescribes ever come to fruition. Fruition strikes me as a word that I chose that brought with it it's own connotation. Orwell would hate that. It is laugh-out-loud funny to read the example sentences that he writes in 'modern english,' as they are so believable and yet, once you have read the paper, horrendously vague, misty (that's a nice concrete word) and blurred meaning-wise. The part that struck me the most noticeably was the point at which Orwell says that these words anesthetize a part of the brain. It is at once concrete, precise and effective, and meaning-wise, it is perfectly clear. Since I have ever been writing essays, I have used this vague language because it has become programmed into my brain. I have always read books (right here I have to stop myself from writing 'voraciously' before thinking about what I really want to mean) insatiably, and that is where I inherited this language. I was even rewarded for it: my teachers were always impressed with big, vague words and overused metaphors from the books that I read. They graded for polished sentences and smooth-sounding prose, but their failure to reward the underlying meanings or ideas created a writer who spews blurry, half-formed paragraphs. Which is a shame, because I often have good, concrete ideas to share.
Looking at the differences between drafts is always important -- and very Lamottian as well.
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