On how to write real good
- Holism
- Think and write more in the realm of structure, holism, second-order effects... over word by word selection or sentence by sentence construction. More important to think of thoughts as paragraphs, even if they may be one sentence. But more importantly to connect them and contextualize and infuse and embed them with other thoughts and references to other parts of the piece. Both directly and sensibly and sometimes merely externally, a la and via Coherence (linguistics). But also within and intermixed and recursively via Cohesion (linguistics) (as in not just a, then b, then c, but as you articulate a, you are also connecting a to b or a to someone else's point or to some fact (cohesion) by articulating the connection in the writing), which imbues your writing with emergent meaning, but also in the opposite direction gives it depth via Recursive, dialectic and sublative effects
- Minimalism
- Minimalism in writing is empathy for your reader because it respects their time and requires understanding your reader in precise and creative ways in order to be understood with a minimum and economy of language, while also not relying too much on a presumptive or presupposing or prefiguring or arrogant understanding of the reader. It is a balancing act, and ever-shifting. A puzzle and creative act
- Ernest Hemingway - Hemingway's minimalist writing style
- Mark Twain - Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.
- Brevity is the soul of wit. - William Shakespeare
- But, Specificity is the soul of narrative.
- But, uninspired generalization brutalizes both the reader and the writer with banality or bigotry.
- But, Specificity is the soul of narrative.
- Minimalism in writing is empathy for your reader because it respects their time and requires understanding your reader in precise and creative ways in order to be understood with a minimum and economy of language, while also not relying too much on a presumptive or presupposing or prefiguring or arrogant understanding of the reader. It is a balancing act, and ever-shifting. A puzzle and creative act
- Meaning as use means writing is a Humanism
- Use language how it actually works, not how anyone thinks it should work.
- Cognizance of Wittgensteinian semantic externalism, etc. to help clarity and communication by more directly accessing reader's actual mechanisms of thinking and understanding by prioritizing using language honed to the audience's actual language. Choose language according to Descriptive Linguistics over some supposed Prescriptive Linguistics crusade/formality/structure. Choose communication over formality, humanism over the abstract, empathy, care, and morality over the heartlessness and coldness of unimbued language with no skin in the game, no human in the words. Impact, punch, intensity, activity over lifelessness
- Writing as Humanism and Empathy and intimacy.
- Use language how it actually works, not how anyone thinks it should work.
- Writing as thinking
- Writing process is itself thinking.
- The written word has a life of its own both when writing and when being read. We have less free will than we tend to think.
- Our thoughts are composed of words whose meaning is largely outside of our control due to various effects of universal grammar, mutual constitution of culture and mind, and the Wittgensteinian notion of meaning being out in the world, open to view (semantic externalism) via its contingent use.
- Non-linear process
- Writing as non-linear, on-going, and organic process.
- Cognizance of the non-linear nature of the writing process and allowing organic and full development at each stage plus applying reflective analysis at each stage, writing toward an ever-evolving, never achieved, some kind of perfection, but trying to get closer with each revision. And understanding that perfection is impossible since writing is based on communication and reaching people, and people are always changing, the world is always changing, and there is always something happening.
- Writing as non-linear, on-going, and organic process.
On how to write real good
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On how to write real good