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Author Topic: Writing, what is it?, what do you think?  (Read 471 times)

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Offline Trokair

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Writing, what is it?, what do you think?
« on: January 18, 2006, 07:05:22 AM »
(OK this is again originally from OW hope that it is an OK read.
im not sure if it should be plased here or in The Discussion Board. if its out of place i apologise)


Yet again I could not sleep and this is the product. Its part thought out discussion and mainly just stream of consciousness (or what ever the spelling is).


Writing, what is it?
MTWC comment yesterday in “why do we write” and another comment I came across yesterday while looking through some old post got me thinking. What is the nature of writing? Both the activity of producing it and the end result. Is it just putting random ideas onto a piece of paper? Or is it more. Can we express ideas in writing that we can not through speaking? I don’t know yet I will have to invest more thinking time into this. If it is so then why can’t we express it through speech? What is it about writing that is so different from speech? I can understand the use of writing to keep records of things that are important. The first written language (as far as I know) was used to record the economics of antic Babylon. But since then people have written thing that have no value to economics or to law or history.

Yet they still write. We as a society consider the “great writers” to be artists. So those this mean that writing is art? But that opens the question what is art? Is it a masterful paining or a beautiful piece of music, is it a sculpture or a play. Then again I have heard people claim that all sorts of thing as art. A couple of years ago some one won the turner price (or what ever it is called) for a room with a light going on and of and it was called art. I don’t know what to define as art. So is writing an art? But what makes it art? Is it because it is the unique idea of the individual who created it. If so what about authors who take somebody else’s idea and twist it slightly and then claim it as there’s. Is writing just a reflection of specking. Do we write the same way we speak? Or does are manor and style change when writing.

Do we say different things when we speak to a person or when we write a letter to that person? Why is it that letter writing fallows certain rules that do not appear in our speech? For instants we start a letter with Dear but who often do we start a conversation with Dear. What about people who can’t speak in the conventional way? They have to use other ways to communicate. Does this affect the way they perceive writing and how they write themselves? If yes why. If no then why not?
When we write why do we do it in the way we do? MTCW said that writing is like a religion for him. He says he wants to write to leave a mark of his “insignificant” live on the world. But why? is it for fame.

This raises the question of what is the nature of fame and why do so many people seek it? I won’t go into this now as I already have the beginning for piece on fame in my mind. Do we write differently if we enjoy the subject about witch we write to when we write because we have to for some other reason? I think probably yes. But what makes writing enjoyable. Is it because we put our ideas out of our head onto something we can physically see or because it is fun to write or is it because we have an ambition to leave a mark on the world. I have heard people say they write to let out emotions. Weather it be a poem or a story or any other forms of writing. But why chose to let them out through writing? Why not through singing or cooking or I don’t know what about sleeping.

Why is it that we are more likely to believe something that is written in a book then when a person tells us the same fact? Why? If there is a scandal in a news paper do you believe it? What about if somebody tells you this but it is not written down any were.

Another question (yes I know there are lot already) what dose writing make us? Does writing make us into a special person? Does it change us? How do other people react to us when we tell them that we write? What do they think about that? Does writing different things give us different images. Journalist are normally considered nosy, prying, meddlesome and so on. What is our image (us on OW)? Are we a bunch of geeks and nerds or are we a group of novelists and poets.
Does our writing determine who we are or do we determine what our writing is?

OK I am out of steam and out of ideas now (something that might have to do with the fact that it is way past midnight) so I will leave you to ponder over the above.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2006, 07:09:35 AM by Tau_Worlock »
Sometimes, the best answer is a more interesting question.

 


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