Writing with a Goal

Of course I ought to be doing other things, like preparing for bedtime or working on grad school applications or not drinking caffeinated beverages, but instead of being responsible or something stupid like that I will write a blog post.

In writing text documents for the on-line exhibit I'm working on, I have stumbled upon a fact or few about writing itself. The fact-cluster is one which most of you already knew on some level, but I am going to augment your knowledge with fresh examples. I hope you find it useful.

1. Writing is usually done with a goal, or a purpose, or a win-scenerio in mind. A person does not simply write things willy-nilly. One writes toward something.

2. Different projects are written with different goals in mind. Take popular books. You can generally get a sense--but only an imperfect one--of the goals that authors wrote their novels towards in author interviews. The goal of a horror book is usually to scare the reader in a way that the reader finds enjoyable, though a bonus is to make the author think about things somewhat. Stephen King expresses this interest; mainly he's concerned with the story, but if you read On Writing you'll see he is nonetheless interested in what the story's "about." Science fiction's goal is often to explore ideas and, most importantly, possibilities--both in the sense of 'things we could do' and 'things that might happen if we don't wise up.' The goal of a romance book is, as far as I can tell, to provide a form of escape or distraction through titillation, sometimes outright arousal. Other books, those labelled "literature" by those who do such labelling, have some sort of critique or education as a goal, perhaps, though often it's a challenge.
The goal of an essay or argumentative book is different; the goal there is to persuade the reader. Perhaps they want to persuade the reader of a theoretical concept; perhaps they want to persuade the reader to a course of action; perhaps they want to persuade the reader (ie. grader) to give them a high mark. Sometimes it is to persuade the public to stop hating the reader so badly--this is a defence.
There is sometimes overlap here: a novel may be an attempt by the author to persuade the reader to respect the author. This would be "writing for fame."
Or, perhaps the writing is not reader- but self-directed. This is writing as celebration, writing as therapy, writing as discipline, writing as reasoning, writing as documenting. Or it is writing as exorcism, because the story burns to come out. Or it is writing for the sheer joy of wordsmithery.

3. Writing, when done well, is shaped by its goal. In English class they explain how, in a good story, each chapter, each scene, each sentence, each word somehow contributes to or drives the plot. This is only true if the goal is to move that plot along. As we have seen, this is not the only goal. A romance novel may include graphic sex scenes which move well past advancing the plot; they are obviously there for some reason all their own. This is because the plot is secondary to the response the author wants to elicit in the reader; usually, this is the same response the reader wants elicited in her, since she bought the romance knowing what would likely contain. (Or perhaps she does care more for the story and skips over these bits as silly. But at rate I think the author can expect that the reader will be buying the book at least to some extent for the sexy bits.) In a horror novel, a scary scene might be included not because it appreciably advances the plot but because it appreciably advances the suspense. In an 'idea' novel, a scene may be included not because it advances the plot but because it explores some new angle to or establishes some important groudwork for the ideas being analyzed. The goal shapes the story, in other words.
Essays are more obviously goal-driven. If you know this, I needn't explain it; if you don't know this, you likely don't want to.
Journals are shaped by their goals more nebulously; in this case it's how it serves the writer.

4. Writing which has no clear goal would be bizarre. Witness things written by children who do not yet have a sense of narrative flair. A friend of mine, for an assignment in our grade five class, wrote a story based on one of the pictures in the Chris Van Allsburg book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The picture dictated that the story have as a moment in it a house which was lifting off. The title was something like "The House on Maple Street." I read the story for him, as an editor, I suppose. I cleaned up some grammar and spelling errors, trying to persuade him that because SpellCheck approved, "The dog was baking," didn't make it correct. Anyway, even then I recognized that there were some serious structural problems with the story. Namely, the house-lifting-off part happened in the last page of a five-page story. That would have been fine, of course, if the preceding four pages hadn't been devoted to an account of the protagonist's dirt-biking. What happened, clearly, was that he had to write about the house on Maple Street, but really he was more interested in dirt biking, so he attached the house bit at the end. Which isn't to say that he didn't think a space-going house wasn't cool. It just wasn't as cool as dirt-biking. His story failed as a story because it's goal was unclear. The first part was writing for himself, but the last part was writing for the teacher. He'd have been better off writing for himself, and then going back and "editing like a mofo," as Kay once put it, so that the whole story worked for the teacher. But it was grade five.

So that's the system I have discovered.
1) We write towards a goal.
2) Different writing projects have different goals. (enlightenment, $$$, arousal, pleasurable fear)
3) Writing projects, when done well, are shaped by their goals.
4) Writing projects with muddled or no goals have unsatisfying structures.

Now why I am discussing this?

Well. As I said, I am working on the virtual exhibit. This involves writing "Storylines," or blocks of text and old-timey photographs and new-timey photographs of old-timey things strung out in a narrative fashion. The point of these storylines, according to my instructions, are to lead the virtual visitor through my exhibit and give them something coherent to follow. This is unhelpful, as a great number of things could do that. What we have to keep in mind is that the visitor is at the exhibit because they want to learn, probably as a form of entertainment. That at least is our ideal visitor; it is also possible that there are high school students who want to extract specific information as quickly, painlessly, and thoughtlessly as possible for an assignment, but they will have to deal with the fact that I am not writing for them alone.

Which means my goal is to provide an information dump of assorted trinket-like facts and anecdotes. It's like a rummage sale: I don't expect everyone to find each piece of information interesting, but I'll only include it if I think someone will.

And that leads of course to my list of points, namely #3: Writing, when done well, is shaped by its goal. What is the goal of a narrative (it has to be a narrative) that functions as an information-dump, meant to entertain and inform?
It is a narrative with lots of tangents and anecdotes that don't advance the 'plot' one bit. It's an interesting genre, one which I could do again, but I can tell you that I didn't find it easy. The best thing about it was the fact that I was allowed to include things for no other reason than that they're "cool" (and on topic).

(If you want to see what this 'genre' is like, read A Brief History of Nearly Everything or Rats or The Serpent and the Rainbow or another popular-audience non-persuasive non-analytical non-fiction book. (Of course all non-fiction has some sort of thesis, but some have more than others. My theses in the exhibit are largely 1) this topic is worth writing about, 2) the overarching structure/topic is in fact an authentic claim/category, and 3) we--that being the museum in general and me in particular--are not idiots. This also acts to shape the narrative.) This can be an excellent and enjoyable genre to read.)

7 Quick Takes (XXI)

1. Was it only last Friday that I went to a party? It must have been just a week ago. That's crazy. That, then is the first entry: On Friday I went to a party. The import of this is that I haven't been to a real social gathering since September--September!--when I visited Oakville, Kingston, and Windsor. It was tremendously awkward at first since I knew so few people and didn't want to latch onto those I did know and drag them down with my own social ineptitude. But in the end it worked out, as I got to know a few other people there and by the end I had quite a bit of fun.

2. Saturday. What happened Saturday? Books happened on Saturday. That's what. We went to the library, where I extracted The Magician's Book again, as well as Neuromancer. I finally got to finish the former, which has excellent parts and less than excellent parts. (It also gave me a book idea--I good one, I think--that I will attempt in the future. Not yet. I am not mature enough to take on this task yet.) I began Neuromancer, but will return it without finishing it, I think. It is perhaps too dark and gritty for me. Maybe not; maybe it's just a mood I'll pass through. But I am not feeling it right now.

After this, there was an expedition to the Peter Pond Shopping Centre (ie. the mall). This involved Chinese food and Bootleggers (not for me) and Zellers and Coles. This later was what interested me most, as from it came The Elements of Style and Huston Smith's The World's Religions. Lacking a reference book in either English grammar or world religions, I decided that I must use my gift certificates to remedy this situation. I have never read Strunk and White's classic, so I picked it up. And Smith's book was the most promising and most comprehensive, though now that I look over it I realize it stills lacks things on what might be called 'minor' religions--Shinto, Zoroastrianism, Rastafarianism, Wicca and Neo-Paganism, Mormonism, Scientology. There is a section for "primal religions" in the back, but this is thin and covers too vast a territory for me to confident of it. I haven't read that far yet, so I can't tell you for sure.

What Huston's book has so far done is greatly improve my understanding of Buddhism and re-familiarize me with Hinduism and Confucianism. That's as far as I've read so far, but I feel edified for having read this. Also, it's here in Fort Mac with me, so I can refer to it as need be. This is better than my host of textbooks in Ontario, which I cannot access. Yay!

Visits to the other stores mentioned, incidentally, involved buying presents for families through the Salvation Army.

3. Events must have occured on Sunday, but for me the day revolved around the twin axes of church, in which I didn't serve, and reading. I haven't spent enough time reading lately, so spending a whole day with The Magician's Book (see above) was nice. Not that I agree with certain parts of that book, but it was nice to just read.

4. And then on Monday work recommenced. Somewhere in this past week I finished writing text files, which is to say that most of the prose for the exhibit I am designing is now in draft form. This I must edit myself and then have edited. I have a rock-truck of work left to do, which means that the coming holidays will lack in certain holiday-like elements. Such as free time, or as much of it as Christmas usually heralds. This exhibit is becoming a stress-centre.

5. I need to spend more time on grad school applications again. I very much do not want to--I have mentioned this sentiment before--but there you go. I must, or I will be here in Fort McMurray for yet another year, and I can tell you that if that wasn't an incentive before, this week has changed that...

6. ...because it is COLD here! Geez jumpin' Louise. It took the knights of yore less time to suit up for a joust than it does for me to get my outdoor gear on, and I'm still woefully underdressed. I lack snowpants or other leg-warming accoutrements, for instance. I wear a coat and a jacket and a sweater over a t-shirt or long-sleeved shirt simultaneously, as well as two pairs of gloves (that's gloves, not mittens, b/c I need fingers to work) and two pairs of socks in my boots. I wear a hat and a hood (sometimes two hoods, if I am wearing my one-and-only hoodie that day) and a scarf or a neckwarmer. Under this pile of cotton and polyester my torso and ears are warm, but my hands, legs, and feet are still cold.

Now, in case you're thinking that I'm merely participating in that time-honoured Canadian tradition of griping about the cold, let me lay down some figures for you. Yesterday I saved some outdoors-related tasks at work for the early afternoon, when it was to warm up to -30 oC. For you Fahrenheiters, that's -22 oF, according to some on-line temperate calculator. Notice that it warmed up to that temperature. You wouldn't know it, though. I heard tell that with the wind chill it was -50. My legs actually hurt they were so cold when I did my end-of-day security round.

Some forecaster was talking about a balmy -5 next week, but I've been told that they lie about the forecast all the time. This happened during the summer when they told us it would be sunny next week, and it never was. I'm not surprised they lost a zero somewhere between the meteorologist's office and the newsroom.

7. I went to work for a few hours today and got a photo shoot done. (Of artifacts and not models, alas.) And then on the way back I had an impromptu photoshoot of some ravens. My subjects were kind enough to pose for me, though they were a bit nervous.

Oh, and I didn't do this last night because the folks wanted to break out a new game Mom bought called Catch Phrase. I found out about it at the party (see above), so Mom got it on Saturday (see above).

Also, again outside of the 7 Quick Takes thing, do people ever e-mail information to themselves, like pictures or links or whatever, instead of burning CDs or using USB keys? If yes, does anyone else feel weird about writing anything in the body? Like it somehow bifurcates your selfhood, makes you uncomfortably non-singular? Or am I the only one who both feels such bifurcations and feels uncomfortable about them?

Title Goes Here

I was going to write 7 Quick Takes, but I was busy and I should get ready for bed now. Bye bye!

Ham Cookies and Sonnet 45

Do you know what's bizarre? The sorts of things that lead up to one's blog in Webmaster Tools. For instance, there are consistently a few people out there (mainly Britain, from what I can tell) who Google "mina makeout" and get my blog up on the search list. That was one post of mine, likely the only post I have which uses either word. (Now, of course, there are two.)

What's really bizarre is the sorts of things I get first place on Google for. Like "ham cookies" (2, now 3 posts) and Sidney Sonnet 45 (2, now 2 posts). Seriously, Thinking Grounds ranks highest for people researching Sir Philip Sidney's 45th sonnet. That's sad. Ham cookies I understand; it refers to an online ad I saw once and my attempts to track down its origin. But Sidney deserves better than me.

For a while there, I was getting high hits for "pachycephalasaurus," too, which I am ashamed to say isn't very representative of my blog. There are not nearly enough dinosaurs on here, and in future I might try to remedy that.

I get lots of Aboriginal spirituality, which does make some sort of sense. I mention spirituality and aboriginal things fairly frequently, sometimes in the same post.

The number one which actually induces people to visit my blog from Google, though (rather than the above, which only describes what sorts of searches my blog turns up in), is "spirituality pathway test." I feel bad about this, because that sucker's sort of plagairized. And that's my #1 from Google.

Of course I assume my traffic is largely not from Google but from the prodigious amount of links I leave on other people's blogs.

Dinosaur:

First Saturday Blog Carnival

Gist: you link your best/most defining/most favouritest blog posts of the month here, and then read other bloggers' submissions. It's a monthly, blog-personality carnival. Yippee!

Link here: http://www.elizabethesther.com/threes_a_crowd/2009/12/the-saturday-evening-blog-post-vol-1-issue-4.html.

7 Quick Takes (XX)

1. I'm actually writing this Thursday night. I might be too busy tomorrow night (a social outing) to do this on Friday, as is traditional.

2. Saturday was Old Fashioned Christmas. Assorted things happened. We had an ice rink and a sledding hill. There were horse rides and pony rides and sleigh rides. There was a hockey shuffle board. There was maple syrup on a stick and children's crafts. There was chilli and hot dogs and hot chocolate and hot cider. There was a silent auction and a gift shop and pointsettas. There were carolers and live entertainment and bonfires and Santa Claus and elves and Christmas decorations. I was floater, as usual. It wasn't a bad event. I stayed later then than I ever have, though. I got out at 8:00. Before I left, I was mopping floors by flashlight.

I want you to look at this photo I took. The one to the right in this paragraph. Those are carollers, yeah, and that's a dude taking pictures of them, and there are little wooden sleighs with reindeer in the background and further back there are Christmas trees with Santa's Village in front of them. But that's not really what I want you to observe. What I want you to notice is the positions of the sun. See where it sits above the horizon? See the length of the shadows? Now here's the kicker: I took this photograph at 12:00 o'clock noon. That's the highest the sun gets around here. And we're not at solstice yet.

Of course, in Inuvik the sun doesn't even raise entirely above the horizon by now.

3. I served in church on Sunday. I've already written about that, though, in this post. That also happened on Sunday. I'm sure other things did, too, but they aren't really coming to me right now. It was a bit of a disappointing weekend, given how short it was.

Writing that Advent post got me to thinking. (Any surprises?) The other day I saw on ad on Facebook exhorting me to celebrate Newtonmas on 25 December. Maybe they want to join the festive season with their own scientistic holiday (I say 'festive season' because this time of year certainly has holidays other than Christmas, and the Jewish community began to observe Hannukah more to fit into the mainstream culture, Islam has the Eid and many religions have solstice celebrations, so I think it's fair to say this is one of those times of year that are celebrated by many different cultures). I have a suspicion that they want to practice a bit of irony and try to replace Christmas' spot in the mainstream culture with their own holiday, but I know I shouldn't think that because it's uncharitable. The choice of Newton-mas over Newton Day makes me wonder, though.

Anyway, this is the second scientist-based holiday campaign I've heard of. The other is Darwin Day. It makes sense for the atheist revolutionists and secularists to try and create a seasonal cycle. Conversion Diary has written about the importance of liturgical seasons, and in my incarnation as a Religious Studies student I have come to realize that many faith traditions take seasonal cycles far more seriously than your average Christian. I like being connected to the natural, planetary cycle because it makes me feel more agricultural and less urban, which is at this point nearing hypocrisy. Regardless, I realize how important it is to be able to enact a symbolic, community narrative each year, and the cycle of fall and return is a potent one. I think it will be a difficult project for the scientistics to create such a symbolic narrative. The creation even of a narrative has proven difficult (see the failure of things like The Great Story to gain momentum), and even people like Dawkins have noted that atheist communities seem inherently prone to dissolution.

Strictly as a scholar of religion, I'd like to see how this calendar holiday deal develops for the atheist movement. Will they try to use the actual idea of calendar holidays--that is, creating an annual narrative that the whole community reenacts--or will they find that is antithetical to their whole project of atheism? And do they have the voice and numbers to make this become popular? People who are still in academia (where atheism is more influential), could you keep your ears to the ground and let me know what develops?

4. I'll never finish this post if my entries continue to be this long.

I finished reading the Lovecraft collection (Nick, if you're reading this, know that you can borrow it now). Unrelated to this, I also finished reading Isaiah. I am now in--you guessed it--Jeremiah.

Thoughts on Isaiah: at some point I need to sit down and read it in bigger chunks. Maybe chart it out. I feel like something's there, but I'm not seeing it. I'm feeling like my education in close reading, while necessary and formative, is limiting me in my ability to see the whole of things I read. I want a sense of the whole structure (an idea I got from Frye, and again there are no surprises there). I have some sense of unease concerning this book. It's my first Prophet since my months in the Wisdom books, of course, so it's been a little while since I read much about carnage and slavery, I guess. This is why I want a sense of the whole.

I started this with Lovecraft, so I guess I should say something about him. Not the best, but certainly not bad. If you have any interest in the horror genre, you ought to read him. If not, then I suppose you need not. "Facts Concering the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" remains my favourite, though "Whisperer in the Darkness" is a close second.

I have started reading Daphne de Maurier's Rebecca, and am so far enjoying it.

5. Today I received a thank-you (I won't tell from whom or for what) in the form of a $25 gift certificate for Peter Pond (a mall up here) and a space pen. It's one of those pens that can write underwater upside-down in a vacuum on a greasy surface at 100 degrees Celsius. (OK, I realize that it is impossible to be both underwater and in a vacuum or at 100 degrees Celsius and in a vacuum. You know the pen I'm discussing, though.) I also received a $2o gift certificate at Chapters-Coles-Indigo, so I have some fun lined up this weekend!

6. I had some work related things to share. I can't really remember. Let's see. It's cold. But not as cold as it usually is here this season, and it's bound to get colder. And I am now starting to think I hear people with me (usually upstairs) in empty buildings, especially when I have to go upstairs. But those weren't what I had in mind.

There's an article in the Queen's alumni magazine about female sexuality which is pretty interesting, but that's obviously not it because that has nothing to do with work.

That's it! I remember! Sorry, this is negative. OK, I shouldn't say it, because this might get back to me in a bad way. I don't think anyone at work is even aware that I blog, but it's the Internet. Who knows who's reading, right?

Notwithstanding, let me just say this: I am annoyed when educators speak in non-standard English. In particular, I am annoyed when educators speak in a regional dialect--Newfinese, say--when they are educating in a different region--northern Alberta, say. I'm worried they'll teach the kids bad habits, for one. With Newfinese, the worst will be the habit of replacing all ats with tos. ("Go and sit to your desk.") Prepositions and articles, in case you didn't know, are some of the worst for making people judge you. Not only is a person less likely to mistake a vern or noun, but we're usually more forgiving when you do, since then it seems like you're ESL. If you mistake a preposition or article, though, you just sound lazy/slangy/ignorant. This is problematic because, in English, prepositions are the hardest part of speech to learn. This is part of the reason why Chinese immigrants sometimes appear less intelligent to English-speaking Caucasians (or anyone else who thinks they're less intelligent based on language use, I suppose). It's also why it's a problem if you're teaching young kids and you use prepositions incorrectly. We don't systematically teach our children prepositions, but rather teach it through example. (Since it's almost entirely idiomatic and follows no universal pattern, it would be virtually impossible to teach by rote or rule, anyway.) So they kids might pick up the teacher's preposition use, which preposition use will be invalid in the context of all of the English-speaking world with the exception of Newfoundland and maybe Cape Breton. And since they won't be speaking in a Newfoundland accent, people won't chalk it up to coming from Newfoundland but will instead assume that the kid's just not as bright as he/she probably is.

Also, when you tell the kids to stay on the bridge and the nearest bridge is on the very busy highway, I get a little worried. I really hope that the kids know that "bridge" in Newfinese refers to a porch or deck just as much as it refers to a piece of architecture spanning a river, ravine, or road, and that therefore the teacher is telling them to stay on the deck. I don't see how they could know this, but then again I didn't see any of them headed for the highway, either.

I don't think there's anything we can do about this. I certainly don't want to discrimate against people who speak differently than me. It just seems like it's going to be a problem in the education system, as it might give kids habits which will be an unnecessary detriment to them in the future.

Educators, what do you think?

7. OK, cut to the chase, because I need to go to bed: Jon asked in a recent post about life being fulfilling. Or he discussed, more than asked. OK. I feel sometimes unfulfilled because I work for so much of my life now. For those of you still in school, I say this: be happy. School's better than the work force. At least, that's how it's been for me.

So where do I get my fulfillment? The loser answers are blogging, books, writing, and Corner Gas. The less loser answers are fortunately truer, if less frequent. Going to church is actually a big one. I know it sounds hokey, but it's true. St. Thomas' is now a big deal to me. Refer to the Advent post. And time with the dog is actually up there, too, even though she's getting smelly.

And I can't think of any more right now, other than thinking, which I try to do a lot of, and maybe playing Banagrams with the folks.

I need more 'inputs' (think Navs talk, for you Navs readers), and I really need more 'outputs'. Actually, a lot of my outputs are inputs and vice-versa. But what keeps me trucking right now really are those things I mentioned. Other than that I worry about my eyes dying on me due to the superfluity of screens, it works so far.

Simple pleasures are not for simple people; simple people need complex pleasures to keep them occupied, while complex people can deal with stangation because their own minds can turn fairly minor stimuli into fascinating phenomenon. Obviously there's really no such thing as 'simple people.' But I think there's an element of truth in what I'm saying. Look up the original meanings of extrovert and introvert in the personality theories.