Genre

Genre theory informed my dissertation on nineteenth-century American literature (civil war literature to be precise). The course I am teaching on academic writing has a textbook that uses genre theory to explain how to write for post-secondary institutions. I will say more in future. This is a warm-up of sorts to introduce the idea of genre, which I am adding to my repertoire of subjects for this blog.

Freewriting

Freewriting is a way to record one's thoughts as they occur. Rather than letting one's inner editor interfere with one's writing (something writers often do), freewriting disallows editorial intervention in oneself.

This is a form of stream-of-consciousness writing. Physician, psychologist and philosopher William James (brother of, guess who, Henry James), invented the term "stream of consciousness." A famous bout of stream-of-consciousness writing ends James Joyce's Ulysses. Note, though, that literary stream-of-consciousness writing may actually be edited.

For my purposes here, free writing is not literary stream of consciousness. It is actual stream-of-consciousness writing (as close as one can come to recording one's own thoughts in words, which I realize is an imperfect art).

I recommend using a pen and paper rather than a keyboard, for keyboards make deleting text tempting, and frequent typos will make one's inner editor wake up screaming from its slumber. In freewriting, one cannot go back and change anything: spelling errors, weird words, embarrassing thoughts, nonstandard grammar, improper punctuation must all remain. Just keep writing, without stopping or going back to change things, for at least 15 minutes.

Pure freewriting has no topic at all. The results can be weird and disturbing, but pure writing is useful for unblocking yourself or working on a problem that you are not sure you have or when you are not sure what the problem is.

Focussed freewriting has a topic. Focussed freewriting is beneficial for working on specific ideas. Unlike pure writing, focussed freewriting could be clear enough for someone else to read, but again, without fussing about grammar or even logic.

The word mimesis (imitation, representation) has remained in currency mostly due to Aristotle. He and Plato are influential early philosophers of art in the Western tradition. They did not always have good things to say about representation (by "they" I really mean "Plato''); nonetheless, their ideas still circulate. I am not an expert in either of them. Read them for yourself or look at secondary sources about them.

Aristotle's significant discussion of art is in his Poetics. For Aristotle (and people of the classical Greek period), verse (poetry) was the mode for artistic composition, so that in Poetics Aristotle also discusses drama (which the Greeks wrote in verse). Aristotle made famous the idea of catharsis, the idea that representation has a positive psychological effect on the individual viewer of drama, purging negative energies, so to speak, from the audience, and creating beneficial energies and thus doing an overall cultural good. Aristotle speaks of catharsis in tragedy (a type of drama, remember, not just "sad events"), but people today use the term in a more general sense, even applying it to gaming.

Plato also discusses mimesis, though Aristotle tends to be more systematic than his teacher Plato, who framed his philosophical views in the form of discussions (actual or not) between Plato's teacher Socrates and Socrates's followers.  Plato most famously discusses mimesis in The Republic. Plato did not think mimesis was a positive force; instead, he thought mimesis, as a copy of the real, was a degradation of the real, itself a degradation of the ideal, and Plato took the ideal very seriously. In The Republic (Book X) Plato recommends (with the slightest of regrets) that all poets be banished from the polity--that's how seriously he took the ideal.

Aristotle is more of the artist's philosopher than Plato. Still, some people who do not like art will use an argument similar to Plato's. The idea, for example, that fiction is lies and nonfiction is truth (or "real") is basically Plato's argument.  Know the enemy.

Links: Plato's Republic; Aristotle's Poetics.

I am in a writing group now, as I mentioned in a previous blog posting. It is small, but The Carrot (the sponsor) is helping us to do more promotion and perhaps flush out the writers in the area. There is a Facebook page as well (which I am mentioning simply to promote it here).

What are the benefits of writers' groups? As the Haliburton Highlands Writers' and Editors' Network say in their website, writers circles allow people to "share knowledge and resources"--people with a common interest gather together socially, true, but members can get feedback (formal or informal) about specific pieces of writing, and they can seek advice or make contacts related to professional concerns (marketing, that is).

Our group meets at and is sponsored by an arts collective that runs a community cafe (The Carrot). I certainly have been writing more than I did before I starting meeting with the group. Sometimes writers circles  are ephemeral, but some of them last a long time or become somewhat famous, such as the (sort of writers group) Bloomsbury Group and the Algonquin Round Table.

I have not followed any writing blogs until now, but I am going to follow three blogs as of today.

http://thewritepractice.com/   This is a finalist of the best writing blogs of 2011/12.
http://advocacywga.wordpress.com/ This is the blog for the Writers Guild of Alberta.
http://alitchick.blogspot.ca/ Michelle Alfano's blog. I looked at it and liked it.

Writing Group

I am trying to start a writing group at the Carrot Cafe in Edmonton on Tuesdays from 7 pm to 9 pm. Writing groups encourages self-discipline. To attend regularly a writing group already demands discipline, but the group itself reminds you that writing is important. Having acquaintances and friends (even strangers) acknowledge your own commitment helps you maintain a commitment. The first meeting was last week. Right now a total of two people (including me) are in the group. The plan is to do writing prompts during the session--that is, the group will actually write rather than talk about writing. I had hoped to do manuscript reading (workshopping) once a month too. We need more than two people, though.

Are pictures worth a thousand words?

 The statement "a picture is worth a thousand words" has an obscure derivation, but people have pinpointed a moment when the phrase saw print; Wikipedia offers a similar derivation to the early 1910s and an association with advertising.

I like the idea that a character created by Ivan Turgenev germinated the idea of images having more content than words, as found in the 1862 novel Fathers and Sons. Turgenev and Henry James were good friends.

Inverted pint glass (from stock.xchng)

I disagree with the idea that images have more content, because the specificity of the picture and the words are what is at issue. I have had some film and literature students argue that film is superior to printed text because a film image contains more information than words can represent.

I think that people are comforted by film images because people tend to absorb visual information faster than written words. Visual images don't have to be symbolic, whereas writing requires decoding (the ability to read a specific language through symbols).

Yet some images are not easy to interpret, even the nonsymbolic kind. (See the caption on the image to the right.)

Besides, a film image is not the same as an image that people normally see during the day just by walking around and living. Film images are stylized (even for those films that claim to be documentary in approach). Cameras give the illusion of objectivity because they mimic human sight, but mimicry is still a form of mimesis (representation or imitation).

from stock.xchng

Security camera footage might be closest to a kind of pure objectivity, but even then, security cameras are positioned in specific places rather than randomly. Their location is selected. As well, note that security cameras will often not record much new information at all (the same unused doorway may well have the same image for days at a time). Security camera footage only becomes interesting when something happens that catches security personnel's attention.

 Human attention (even if programmed into a computerized alarm system) is what makes that footage significant--what human attention considers worthy of being recorded and reviewed. That judgment of significance is what makes any particular sequence of footage (or even of a single still) worthwhile of being described in words. Once an image requires judgment, the possibility of mimesis arises.

So--I like pictures and words: together, alone, whatever.