24/7 customer support
Professional writers
No plagiarism
Privacy guarantee
Affordable prices
94% of return customers
Free title page
Free bibliography
Free formatting
Free of plagiarism
Free delivery
| Home |
| Order form |
| Contact us |
| Blog |
| Uninvited Writing |
Why engage in uninvited writing if you have to put up with that? And so most of us don't. Which would be fine except for one small fact: we do have things we want to tell people even if they haven't invited us to do so. But there is another fact. We are all capable of stopping people on the street and fixing them with our eye and getting them to listen and making them glad they did. We are, that is, capable of writing things which make readers want to read and glad they did. We just have to do it, and probably put up with a lot of rude refusals for a while. But we can insist on being heard.
"Pssst! Hey Mack. You wanna buy my novel?" What a relief, then, to write, not because someone is demanding it, but because you want to. Even if it is a tricky letter, even if it is a piece of persuasion that will be hard for you because you lack the professional training you need, or even if it is a novel you know will keep you in the woods for years; still it gives enormous satisfaction to feel that you have made the decision to expend your time and effort this way. You know you will have frustrations, but you want to write this thing and so you find it easy, comparatively speaking, to put up with them. The main psychological fact about uninvited writing is that you naturally invest yourself in the writing task. Or do you? For if uninvited writing always goes so well, how come everyone doesn't do it? Part of the problem may be that most people are introduced to writing in school where it is compulsory. "Who would ever write if they didn't have to?" But, in addition, uninvited writing has a built in difficulty of its own. It takes arrogance, chutzpah,hubris. "Uninvited writing" is just another way of saying "no audience." You have to walk up to strangers on the street and tap them on the shoulder and say, "Excuse me, would you please stop what you are doing and listen to me for a few hours? I have something I'd awfully much like to tell you." You know the reply you will get. Why engage in uninvited writing if you have to put up with that? And so most of us don't. Which would be fine except for one small fact: we do have things we want to tell people even if they haven't invited us to do so. But there is another fact. We are all capable of stopping people on the street and fixing them with our eye and getting them to listen and making them glad they did. We are, that is, capable of writing things which make readers want to read and glad they did. We just have to do it, and probably put up with a lot of rude refusals for a while. But we can insist on being heard. Insisting on being heard. I remember the particular moment when I saw clearly how essential that feeling is for all writing, but especially for uninvited writing. I hadn't yet, I think, published anything -- and no one had asked me to write this piece I was struggling with, but I was trying to say some things in it that were very important to me about teaching and learning. I had already managed to get down on paper in one form or another a lot of what I wanted to say. (In other words, my fear of tapping strangers on the shoulder wasn't so overwhelming that I pretended I had nothing to tell the world.) But the writing was going terribly. The whole thing was a mess, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't seem to get things clear. And then finally things went better. I stopped to reflect on what had happened, and I wrote a note to myself (shortened and cleaned up here): 6/11/71. I'm correcting a near-to-final draft. Finally I'm making it much clearer and better. I'm rearranging sentences and points so they finally work. I had it all screwed up -- my interpretation all mixed in with my information in an ineffective way -- and my information unclear. Then a series of rearrangings make things fall into place with a click. So what made this possible? It can't be any new knowledge about logic or sentence-arrangement or rhetoric. I was already trying as hard as I could to use all of that knowledge I had. I was struggling over and over again -- writing and rewriting, arranging and rearranging -- and it was still mud. It didn't work. All my best knowledge didn't help. But finally I can see what did help. It was the feeling "Damn it, I've got to be done with this thing and I know goddamn well most people won't really hear it and thus they won't accept what I'm saying -- it will all roll off their backs -- even if they read it, which they probably won't do because it is such a mess -- but if they do they will think it's just a fuzzy harebrained scheme of Elbow's. I'm tired of that. I'm not willing for that to go on any longer." In short, what made the difference was a decision I made about my stance toward the reader. That inner act of readjusting my transaction with readers caused the words and ideas finally to come out in a different and better order. It was like my readjustment to my lecture audience where I got mad at students saying they couldn't hear me and I moved from behind the podium to the front of the stage. A combination of frustration and anger made me finally insist on being heard and this made me suddenly able to do something with language I hadn't been able to do till then. The essential question for writing, then, is this: how long are you willing to be unheard? It would be impossible to avoid all compulsory writing and sad to run away from all uninvited writing. But having a gun at your head and having to go out and tap strangers on the shoulder are not your only ways of relating to the audience. Readers can invite you: call you up and say "Will you come out to dinner with me? I'll pay if you will tell me about your trip." Or "It's on me if you'll tell me your thinking about the project you did last year. I have one now just like it." What better way to make you enjoy communicating and to bring out the best thinking. An audience that invites your words but doesn't demand them acts like suction. Ten years ago I had only a vague sense that I might write a book. It was sort of a fantasy that I didn't take seriously. But when a publisher's representative knocked on my office door to show me books for the courses I was teaching and asked at the end whether I had any writing projects in mind, and when he said that his editor might like to talk to me about my idea, and when after some negotiation the editor was willing to offer me a contract, suddenly I started to take the idea seriously. Because someone was willing to publish me, I started to have more ideas and, more important, I started to write them down like mad. If you want to see the vivid effect of an inviting audience, think back to occasions when people wanted your thinking or advice about something you'd never thought about. At first you had nothing to say but the fact of their asking probably put things in your head. Writing's greatest reward, for most of us anyway, is the sense of reaching an audience. Ideally the audience should love what we write, but in the last analysis, it's enough if we can feel them reading. The fisherman falls in love with fishing because of that unpredictable wiggle, that moving pressure on his hand, even if the fish gets away. At least you felt them tasting your bait, at least you made contact with someone on the other end of the line. This experience makes you want to pick up the pencil and try again. This time you'll hook them. But it is you who are hooked. The usual way to get yourself invited to write something is by doing well under the two previous conditions: writing something uninvited or compulsory that's good enough to make them call you up and ask for something else. (A good reason to learn to deal with uninvited and compulsory writing.) It seems unfair. The rich get richer. The best racers get the best starting place. You don't get the delightful encouragement of an invitation till you have already had a success. But you don't have to wait for the invitation. Without having to muster all the courage it takes to stop strangers on the street, you can nevertheless find friends or make acquaintances who will want to read your words. In effect, publish: find an inviting audience, even if you have to copy out your writing in two copies or ditto it or pay for xeroxing; even if you have to start with friends who read it partly because they like you and care about what's in your head. Invite them over to read or listen, even if part of the incentive is a nice dinner or good refreshments. And you can find others who will want to read your writing because they want someone to read theirs. However you get it, a willing audience does wonders. It causes you suddenly to write more easily, to think of more, and get more satisfaction from writing. Many people sabotage their hunger for an audience by sending off their stuff to highly competitive magazines or publishers who will almost certainly reject it. Too many rejection slips can make you so discouraged that you give up. Don't attempt large unknown audiences till you have made full use of a small known group of willing readers: connected with it, gotten pleasure from it, gotten feedback and learned to improve your writing on the basis of it. Only then are you in a good position to decide what to send off into the unknown and how much rejection you are willing to put up with. People also sometimes sabotage their instinct for finding a real audience by feeling they need to get permission from an expert before giving their writing to the real audience. If experts are the real audience for your writing, by all means give it first to them. But if, for example, you are writing up some important insights you've learned about how to be a better parent, you are likely to have the impulse to give your writing first to a psychologist or therapist or university professor in the field. You feel you need an expert to check out your words before they go to the real audience of parents. It's a natural impulse. I've certainly acted on it numerous times. We seek someone with authority to tell us if we are right or to give us suggestions. Most of all, we seek a midwife to usher our child into the world. But watch out. Checking your writing with an expert often turns out to kill the whole project. First you have to find the right expert. That can be a problem. Then the expert may not respond. Experts are busy. Even if they respond positively, their response may actually stymie you: "This is very interesting. I think you should read Smith and Jones, oh yes, and Abernathy" -- just three people to him but a year's reading or more for you -- and if you do start reading, you are liable to conclude, "Oh dear, I have nothing really new to say," or "Oh dear, there's so much I don't know about this field, I can't write till I master it." And your project withers and dies even though you have already written a piece with lots of good insights -- a piece that might in fact be more useful to real parents than Jones or Smith or Abernathy if only you get a little feedback from parents and do a little revising. And, of course, the expert may discourage you in a much more straightforward manner. Once I sent off an essay about learning that I was excited about to an expert I thought would see the genius in it and give me some good suggestions. I got a reply which said nothing more than I wish people wouldn't use the word 'concept' unless they really understood what it meant." But how could it be otherwise? The authority is tired of reading about child rearing. He's read too much already. He is not a willing audience for your words. At best he reads out of duty or as a favor. He will simply notice the differences between what you have written and what he believes to be the best writing in the world about the topic.I paint a bleak picture. Of course it can work out well. The expert might give you just the encouragement you need -- along with a few suggestions which are just right for helping you revise and give your writing to the audience. But I'm deeply suspicious of the impulse that makes so many people feel they must get clearance from readers for whom the words are not intended before giving them to readers for whom they are intended. Experts are experts because they know a lot, but the one thing they cannot tell you is what it is like to read your words as a non-expert -- for example as a curious or baffled parent who has read very little about child-rearing."But what if my thinking is false," you may say, "and my advice about child care is wrong?" But if you were riding on a bus or talking to friends you would tell them what you have to say about child-rearing if they were curious to know. So why do you need permission now from an expert to do the same thing? To engage in the essential audience transaction in writing -- directing words to people who are interested in what you are saying? Speaking would be a curious business if we felt we had to get permission from listeners who are not likely to want to hear our words before directing them to people who are likely to want to hear them.You are in a good position to go to experts after you have roadtested your words -- after you have seen what works in practice and what doesn't and then done some revising. At this point you will have a crucially different relationship to experts than if you sent it to them first. You won't be saying, "Please sir, may I have permission to let this thing out into the world?" (as though your writing were a new drug that might turn out to be thalidomide). You will feel more like a colleague saying, "Look, I've got something interesting here, something that works. I wonder if you would be willing to tell me where you agree and where you don't." Summary and Advice
|
|||||||||||
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
24/7 customer support
Written from scratch papers only
Any citation style
Fully referenced
Never resold papers
275 words per page Courier New font