Skip to main content

Day 1- Writing About Writing

I honestly need to stop ruining my earphones. I think this is about the 10th pair  to get ruined this year. This time I slept and woke up and it became the manual kind that had to be held at the connection point to get both ears to function. Urgh! It doesn't have anything to do with today's blogpost, but that's how I like to write- with earphones plugged in, playing an old song that I listen to a tad too often. I don't really have a writing project for my blog, but I have one for something else that I'd rather not bore you with. So let's stick with writers blogging about writing.

I'd say it's not my style- writing about writing- what I think aims at making others better writers. I'm of the "please just write something I'd like to read" opinion. I guess there are some people who write so well that they get asked to write about writing. But I'm not quite there yet.

What I think about writing about writing is that it's kind of a constraint to the person who's learning how to write. Except the write-up is teaching basic stuff like proper punctuation (which I could definitely use some lessons on),  enhancing readability, ways of including humour in writing or things like that, teaching someone how to write is indirectly inflicting ones style on another person. 

Lol...It already sounds like an essay. No one deserves that on a fine Saturday morning. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that, not only is writing about writing boring for me, I think it could 'reduce' the individual differences in writing that make it possible to read 10 essays by different people, but about the same topic, without getting bored. But this isn't to play down the impact of experience on writing excellence, or to say that there can't be ways to improve oneself based on others' advice on how to do that. I just think it needs to be done with a bit of caution. Since writers can only give as much as they have, writing advice -like any other form of advice- should be accepted with caution. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hey Lil Troublemaker.

Photo credit:  looseends  via  Foter.com  /  CC BY-NC-SA Freezing as usual. I've gone through today's edition of "school sucks, especially in the Winter". I have a midterm anyway, so there's no way around school today. No point whining. There's a 3-minute bus for the 7minute walk I have to make to my next class.  When the roads are icy and slippery (like today) and man's greatest fear is becoming 'Humpty-Dumty the second', that walk becomes more10-ish minutes. So, of course I'll take the bus! *Whew!*. I made the bus.  To calm my raging nerves - because I'm pretty tensed about my Stats midterm - I read the cover page of Metro newspaper. The story I first see is something about wheelchairs not getting priority over strollers. Lol? Who wouldn't know that? On second thought, it wouldn't be on the front page of the paper if something hadn't happened. Apparently, some bus driver had told someone with a toddler to get off t...

Why "Be Yourself" is Terrible Advice

I recently had a conversation with one of my friends, which led her to the conclusion that I wasn’t spiritual enough to date her brother. It was kind of a joke, but as we know, in every joke there’s at least an iota of truth.    So, it got me thinking. See, I self-identify as an open-minded person, at least in my circle of Nigerian, Christian friends, I’m a little bit of an anomaly. I have my own ideas about life, alcohol, sex, and other things I wonder about. No, it’s nothing that necessarily contradicts the Bible; it’s just a little too much for my people. Now, without even knowing the details of our conversation, you’re already thinking I’m not Christian enough to date you or your brother. Don’t worry I don’t want to date you either. On a serious note though, I was taken aback a little by my friend’s conclusion, mostly because I wondered if the things that made her come to that conclusion were the same ones being impediments to my ability to ...

The Ontario Christian and 2015 sex-ed changes

I don’t know if it’s too many classes in sociology of religion, human sexuality, and the likes of these that have made my opinions significantly different from friends with whom I share other opinions. But since I am yet to find a ground comfortable enough for my Jesus loving self and freedom of expression celebrating side to stand, I write. One of our pastors was /is pretty furious at the recent changes to Ontario’s sex education laws. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let’s take a moment to update you . When it finally loads, please scroll down to view the juice of it. Now that you get the idea, my question to my friends has been what makes this wrong from a non-Christian POV? Given that the entire population is not Christian, why would you expect the laws not to favor the non-Christians as well? If you absolutely detest homosexuality as a religious command and have a religious responsibility to train up your child in the way of God, I expect that you would teach y...