ON WRITING

Every columnist writes to be read. Apart from the pressure of a due date, writing is its own reward and its own sense of fulfillment. Of course, writing is work as school is work. What to write? The great writer Hemingway said in Paris in his book, A Moveable Feast , “…. All you have to do is write one true sentence. ….and then go on from there. It was easy because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say….” In the movie, The Weatherman, the character of Michael Caine told his son, played by Nicolas Cage, who felt so inadequate as an aspiring writer, that writing is something that Caine has had to develop over the years as a craft. Indeed, all things are learned. In school, we all went through THEME WRITING and taught to be coherent and to be able to write what we mean.

It surely helps to write if one is a voracious reader. But, Ralph Waldo Emerson said that one needs to spend more time thinking and writing one’s own thoughts instead of reading other people’s thoughts and transcripts all the time. For this, one needs a room of one’s own to be able to withdraw from all the hustle and bustle of life. Stephen King said in his book, On Writing, “ It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

photo credit : Title Wave a Facebook page 

What to write for my column in my city ( Davao City) in the Philippines? To be sure, the Davao City literati ( the businessmen, office workers from private & government, the students in the library, the depositors in banks & passengers while waiting, health patients while waiting for their turn in hospitals, housewives, etc ) will want to read. For my assignment in this local daily, the ideal as suggested by a friend is to capture a readership from many walks of life especially on themes addressing women's issues. But, all issues are women’s issues so the metes & bounds are limitless. One can easily lose the reader if one writes quoting grand theories without specific examples.

I was advised that the trick always is to select issues -- closer to the readers' concerns-- and then intersperse these with how the world community is addressing the problem so that the reader can get a sense of how he/she should act, and can see models from other countries -- whether that is to lobby the Davao City council, the regional development council, or national legislators or organize with other NGOs, etc. So, it has been best for me to plan a series, and develop an outline for the next columns as overall guide. I imagine myself reading the article to a typical reader when writing a topic and lace it with compelling issues that will draw my readers' attention. So, it is a must for me to know the recent events and current local condition and study the subject matter. I keep it in mind that it is not always the literati that I am addressing but all who can read.

Language is a social construction of reality. Which is why feminists have always been careful about reinforcing the invisibility of women when we write “he” to refer to both he and she. In writing about women’s issues, we make issues of women politically visible. We imagine an ideal against which we evaluate actual condition and practices.

Writing is symbolic representation. There is authorial intention and readers’ interpretation. A reader could be reading against the intention of the author. All text are cultural. We all have embodied experiences and it informs how we perceive things. The danger of representation is that any writing can be trivialized or oversimplified or read against the grain. Who has the power to determine meaning? In social science, we say, an observation is objective, if at least two or more persons read a thing the same way.

email : isabelita_solamo@yahoo.com

    Writing as messaging  and more 

   

I found out that some school libraries are collecting my columns as clippings on various themes. And as well, in this digital age, I am much pleased that Mindanao Times is also so accessible online. So, today as students are finishing papers and reports, I wish to demystify once more the world of words. First off, is to identify a theme or topic. Find a subject that you are passionate about or a theme that you want other people to know. Then, plot the frame or the outline. Finish the draft. Revise or polish later. Then, just write. 

 What is the message? Do you have something to say? Clarity of mind is important. Even if perspective is in the eye of the beholder, one’s perspective could be wrong or limited based on some standards. It is limited when it is not validated by the reality as you see it or some other desired ideal. What is real? A good tip is finding out whether two or more people look at the same thing the same way. This is sometimes called objectivity. Is it precise? Precision means repeatability as in one minute will yield 60 seconds when you repeat this process of counting for an infinite time. 

 We capture and write about a reality at a particular point in time and that reality changes all the time. So, information is dated all the time. I read recently that the farther you are from the source of illumination (existing knowledge or new things), the less you are going to change. My example for this is the explanation as to why we prefer to listen to old songs. Mostly, we like to listen to old songs simply because we have not heard of the new songs. My liking for the songs of Amy Winehouse or of the French songs of Lara Fabian is fairly recent and by constant listening, I have learned to like their songs. All liking is learned. All love for truth or knowledge is learned and a habit. So, also one can learn a lot from nature and from surroundings and from people when they speak. Or we learn from others when they speak in sign or non verbal cues or when they say nothing at all. 

 Paradigms or theories as ways of thinking to inform our world or our projects are also learned. So, how do we learn? Mostly, we observe using our senses. And yes, we must read and cite the sources and credit those who have been there before us. 

 The world is very old and tons of knowledge are ready and very accessible. The technology to access and to share is as instant as fast food. Just as fast food is the ultimate proof of the folly of the fast life, uploading or downloading of so much information per se is not the same as good analysis. It is not always the equivalent of truth. It is not always the wisdom which we all wish to learn. My analogy for this is that it is still the thinking doctor which decides on the diagnosis and prognosis of a case based on the tale of the patient, from the physical examination, from doing the percussion or auscultation & from a battery of tests. It is not the test results or the voluminous data which decides but the person making the analysis. Many students cannot distinguish between compilation of voluminous information from analysis or truth. Here, tools, theories or existing policy instruments may come in handy. Your new analysis could lead to new reformulations and new truths. Such is what we call pushing the frontiers of knowledge. 

 As much as you can, always deliver the message in an elegant language. Of course, the basic infrastructure is correct grammar. Grammar is about the subject and the predicate. A noun is a name word. In today’s tourism and marketing language, we say “branding.” In gender, sexual orientation or race, we say identity. In behavioral psychology, it could be name calling. The predicate is the action word. And a sentence is composed of the subject noun and the predicate verb. It is said that to write we start with writing one true sentence. To be able to express what we mean, we group the sentences into a coherent paragraph. We call this messaging. And, that in a few words is one perspective about what writing is all about.