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Virgin response

by urdad

First, a famous quote, sometimes attributed to your namesake, that deserves some consideration: "I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter."

It's sort of a variation on another of my favorite writing quotes, this one from Ernest Hemingway: "Write drunk. Edit sober."

My point here being, not that writers should always try to keep their material short. But they should always strive to keep it as succinct as necessary in order to accomplish their particular goal. Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" is about 27,000 words long. Herman Wouk's two-volume masterpiece "The Winds of War" / "War and Remembrance" is about 665,000. Both are incredibly moving, insightful novels, but they have different objectives and neither of them has a single unnecessary word. (Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," by the way, the Great American Novel by my reckoning, clocks in at about 109,500 perfectly placed words.)

Anyway, I really like the idea of having a sizable minimum word count for responses to ensure that people who are going to engage intend to do so seriously and not as hit-and-run smart asses, the basic stock in trade of social media, for good or ill.

But beyond that, I want to respond that I love your approach to this blog, and I look forward to seeing what develops. In my experience, you have strong beliefs, strongly held and are very capable of expressing and supporting them, with an extra dash of clever delivery. I'll be especially interested to see how well the required minimum length encourages similar thoughtfulness and cleverness from those of us who respond to your ideas.

As for swearing, by the way, you have quoted me accurately, though I would add two things. One is that I am not at all averse to swearing, and am fully fluent in it, though there are clearly situations where it is out of place. No. 2 is that when overdone, it suggests a speaker or writer who is too lazy or unimaginative to think up more precise, interesting ways to show emphasis or make a point.

(Which, forgive the aside, reminds me of an experience I had in college attending a lecture by renowned author Norman Mailer. Mailer was a somewhat controversial figure, and during the Q&A, one of the students in the audience took the opportunity to complain about Mailer's writer, calling his books "uninteresting" and his style "laborious," to which Mailer simply replied, "Perhaps if you find my style 'laborious,' it's because your brain is limp.")

Anyway, some quick thoughts on other topics you raised:

  • I predict you will have more than 10 readers.

  • I like that you quote John Wick, though I only saw the first movie and my reaction was that the number of killings reminded me of what I think about people who swear too much.

  • As a former English teacher, I have to address the challenges facing that particular position. I used to envy the math and science and certain other teachers because they often built their grades on tests and experiences that were True/False, multiple-choice or otherwise one-response-per-question items that could be graded in 15 or 20 minutes, whereas I was constantly faced with essays ranging from 500 words to 5,000 words, and giving useful feedback required 15 to 20 minutes per student. It was exhausting and very difficult to do in ways that were meaningful to students. I can't speak for other teachers and I'm quite sure that many fell back on picayune grammatical or stylistic points that were easy to identify and hard to argue. But do be aware that judging writing - for the very reason you state - is a special challenge.

  • I think the greatest value of writing is the writing. Whether anyone reads it or not is somewhat secondary - though highly gratifying and welcome, to be sure. But two-thirds of the value of writing is spitting out the junk in your brain and then poking through it to realize what you think.

I look forward to following along as you learn about yourself. Thanks for letting us in. Enjoy!