I studied at St Edmund Hall, Oxford for three years. I have been writing for twelve years and reading for twenty-five. You may have noticed I have an opinion on most things. I cannot tell you what Russian formalism is, nor tell my structuralist arse from my post-feminist elbow. Literary theory is the most ephemeral sort of writing, fine if you like that sort of thing. But I wouldn't foist it on my worst enemy. If writing about music is like "dancing about architecture," then writing about writing is like dancing about dancing. All dancing is about dancing. All writing is about writing, because the reader can come to it with the intention of critiquing the style, critiquing the content, seeking material to reinforce her political beliefs or seeking material to challenge her view of the world. "Seek and ye shall find" is true, but what ye find may not necessarily be what ye sought. A writer pours herself into language, but cannot take control of it, and what a reader perceives has a totally unknown content of the writer. How many times have you read an article somewhere and said "Is he being serious?" Un fortunately, the language for humour and the language for seriousness cannot be accurately distinguished , as I have found to my cost!!

This is all very depressing. You mean words can't do anything ?

First of all, it's not depressing. Never let yourself be depressed (see chapter II). To take the second point, "poetry achieves nothing" writes Auden, "it survives in the valley of its own making". What he means is, "You can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." Words are catalysts for particular directions of reasoning and the meanings of texts depend on assumptions that readers bring to them. Readers change, but their texts remain the same. Perhaps the very writing that tries to achieve something is the very writing that fails.


It's time to recapitulate. We have seen:

1. That an author creates a text by accessing a pre-existent set of concepts called words, and arranging them in a formation such that structured ideas about the world emerge.

2. That the ideas are not the same as the words; they are merely mediated through those words.

3. That the process of creating the text, in crystallising those ideas, allows the author to move on from them, through an automatic release of energy, and through the controlled direction of the author of what he is writing.

4. That new structures and connections between ideas are then generated to be evaluated by the reader, whether the reader is the author or someone different.

5. That the exact nature of these ideas depends on the reader much more than on the text.

The ranking of a text

Exercise:

What makes you read a text? How do you read a text? Consider different types of text. Take five different types of reading matter, getting a mix of the "functional" and the "leisurely", the "challenging" and the "relaxing", the "poetic" and the "prosaic". Consider the questions carefully and write about each.                                                                                      (25 marks)

What is the first question a reader asks herself when faced with a new text? When boiled down, the question is always
Is it worthwhile to pursue this text? By a process miraculous in its dependable simplicity, the reader understands instinctively on a deep, inexplicable, and not always conscious level, the amount of love that the author has put into a work; in other words the amount of service the author has attempted to provide to the reader in creating this text. Then, the reader selects a level of reading that suits his purposes. Again, this selection happens both at the conscious level and the unconscious level (as with everything in life).

What are the influences on the reader's choice of reading level?

Right. This is my essay for twenty-five marks. The reader's selection of a level of reading is not necessarily determined alone by the level of service she recognises as having gone into the writing of the text. In other words, we may read a trash novel quite intently and critically and merely cast our eyes over Othello. This is related to the point about never being dictated to by the text. The reader weighs up the importance of the act of reading when cast by how much time he or she has before picking the kids up, cooking the dinner or watching the 3:45 at Chepstow. On an unconscious level, however, the reader will judge her own level of reading by a standard dictated by her conscience, and that standard will be affected by what she sees as the quality of service in the text .

The level of service that has gone into a text can be measured empirically but never reduced to an intelligible mathematical formula (except by God, who is omniscient and therefore knows the mathematics behind everything in the universe). It is impossible for any human source to understand the mathematics of any empirical event fully, just as it is impossible that a God could be puzzled by anything. Ultimately, the author is the only human source who can measure the level of service, for he knows the amount of effort he put into his writing. If the writing is designed to communicate definite information, and convince people to take up an offer, for example a leaflet for an adult education course, he can judge how successful he has been by the number of applicants for the course. However, he cannot judge how successful he or she is until enough experimental data has been brought in to suggest that a particular way of organizing the information is more effective at achieving his goals than one previously tried. A badly-written advertisement may succeed in despite of itself in bringing in the subscriptions, but the level of commitment and enthusiasm of the subscribers will be directly affected by the quality of the advertisement and how each individual reader feels treated by the leaflet's compiler.

In other words, another wording of that first key question is how do I feel treated by the author? This happens in all writing. Generally, we don't expect to find the following when we go for information:

"Defined is this course by your attendance,
Defined by the monthly reports your progression,
Four hundred and fifty pounds must you part with,
At ten a.m. the hour becomes in session

Let the cry go out: Hamlet is our text
And thence we'll comprehend A Town Called Alice,
Each lesson pursued by discussion of the next;
And essays will be marked from love, not malice."

Exercise: You have found the above on a course leaflet for a part-time literary appreciation adult education course.
 (a) Assess it as a poem. Point out good and ordinary features (5 marks)
 (b) What are its faults as a leaflet (concentrate on how you would improve it). Assume that all the information needed is contained within the poem. (10 marks).

Now. Compare this to an actual leaflet I picked up the other day. The institution from which I garnered this gem will remain nameless, but bear in mind this leaflet is designed to attract and inform potential customers for a literacy (i.e. basic reading and writing) course. Luckily, the leaflet isn't copyrighted, so I can reproduce it here.

LITERACY COURSE Course Aim: To improve literacy skills Course Content: Students and tutors plan the learning programme on an individual basis. There is a focus on 'real-life' literacy and on building confidence as well as skills. Assessment: Students and tutors agree learning goals, which are regularly reviewed Entry Requirements: There are no formal entry requirements but you need a commitment to regular attendance Qualification in Context and Future Opportunities: The course is for adults who want to improve their literacy skills for a range of different reasons. Advice and guidance on further opportunities is available on an individual basis. Pre-Entry Preparation: A willingness to learn, and an awareness of the importance of literacy in every-day life.

 



Man's constant state is striving. Even the idle are striving after rest and thereby happiness. The person who attempts suicide is usually seeking to show others that they should be helping him more, and the person who commits suicide is striving again for rest and happiness. Luckily, we are not concerned with either case here. Both are ducking a challenge.

The leaflet at the end of the last chapter presents a challenge to its readership. It presents a challenge to the most advanced reader, which you might say is of dubious appropriateness. It will most likely encourage a very superficial level of reading by virtue of its dead tone. The author comes across from this piece as not interested in her subject material - what is "an awreness of the importance of literacy in every-day life?" Assuming that it is the awareness that being able to read and write is a good thing, why bother to put it into the leaflet? Does the author assume that there are people in this country who don't think like that? Does the author assume that there are people who could understand writing like this and yet still need the course? Can one go out and buy a "willingness to learn" as pre-entry preparation? So the first challenge for any critical reader of this pamphlet and any writing student is:

Why did she write like this and how do I *not* write like this?

I picked this leaflet up from a local College of Technology. It was one among thousands on show in the front of the building. All the leaflets were in the same style and a quick glance at two or three more leaflets showed that they were all made on the same formula. It doesn't take a genius, or even a writing tutor, to surmise that;

1. somewhere on the school's computer system there is a MS Word template stating the requirements for all information leaflets. So the leaflet may be designed to give information about the course, but what it actually does, what its first duty is, is to conform to a specific formula. Remember, you must keep sight of your intended reader. This woman (for it was a woman who compiled this leaflet) has as her intended reader someone other than the potential customer . That much is clear from the leaflet's style. Communications disaster no. 1; brought on by red tape. We can only surmise the process by which this leaflet reached the front of the building, but it's a pretty sure bet it came via a level of management.

2. the author is probably deskbound and almost certainly under quite a lot of corporate pressure to conform to a system. It is likely, given the way offices work, that in addition to a large workload, she was given this job to do with no support or feedback for her efforts, and no encouragement to make the document 'user-friendly'. What she was told was probably "get this document out to me by lunchtime." She certainly hasn't thought about what she's writing.

It may be that the course fills up through other means and that the leaflet truly is just a marketing gimmick, but to the critical reader it portrays (maybe betrays!) an office not at peace with its subject matter, itself or its clientèle. It certainly does no favours for the author, for which she herself is squarely responsible.

In the above I may be being exceptionally kind to the author herself and exceptionally severe on an office culture which may be designed to prevent slips like that happening. It doesn't matter; both the author and the institution have implicitly accepted the document and the fault must lie somewhere. So where does the fault lie?

Re-framing

There is a habit in the business world of banning the word "problem." Certainly one of the offices I have worked in didn't have "problems".

Instead it had "issues". But you don't want issues, just like you don't want problems. You want challenges.

Why don't you want issues either?

Because whereas calling something a "challenge" is genuine re-framing of the situation, calling something an "issue" is merely attaching a rather artificial label to something until "issue" becomes a synonym for "problem". Challenge is a word with genuinely positive energy. It is a word that reverses the entire context of a problem to emphasise the opportunities whilst not ducking the fact that taking those challenges is not necessarily going to be easy. The word "issue" originally meant progeny or offspring, and the major meaning today is an edition of a magazine. Neither of which have very much relevance to the problem an office finds itself with. Ironically, of course, if business gurus were to point out that 'problem' need not have negative connotations (mathematics), management courses round the country would be pointing this out as from tomorrow!

So everything is a challenge.

Precisely. Life is a series of challenges with the odd period of rest and recuperation.

There are three things you can do with a challenge: take one up, lay one down and lay one aside.

Taking up the challenge

When you accept a writing task, be it one imposed from without or within, you must face it as a challenge. As soon as you re-frame a task as a challenge, you bring it into the realms of the possible. Sometimes writers will set themselves deliberate technical challenges; W.H.Auden for instance started writing poetry by trying to master technical forms; trying to find ever more complex ways of arranging words. Yet challenges need not be technical - simply the task of writing a poem for one's girlfriend can be a challenge, a challenge that may involve as much a challenge of subject matter as technical form. For my poem Ali-Cats (which can be viewed on the homepage), my challenge was simply this, and among the sketches for the poem are two other complete poems, one about an office Christmas party and one about an evening in watching Australia v West Indies and contemplating. Both I eventually rejected as not good enough, and I had to throw the baby out with the bath water and go back to the drawing board (spot the mixed metaphor). Finally I came up with the idea of describing Ali-Cats, I took up that challenge, and wrote the poem. It didn't do anything for a doomed relationship, but it's a bloody good poem.

Homeostasis and Challenge

Remember, a good thing needs to be repeated. So the moment you have found the idea you are making a challenge, you need to cement that resolution in your consciousness. Repeating the thought to yourself is one way to do that, but we already know that thoughts are very fluid things, and a resolution made with definite strength at one moment is a forgotten thing the next. So the solution? Write the first draft.

The First Draft

• doesn't have to be the same length as your final meisterwerk
• doesn't have to bear very much resemblance to your final meisterwerk
• will be great if it contains all your thought processes on the subject at that particular moment
• is better if you don't allow distractions such as research to crowd in
• is therefore not work, but is payable

Remember, in writing, your ultimate employer is yourself. There is a business magnate in Brazil, Ricardo Semler, who has totally transformed the commercial model, and one of his major innovations is that employees set their own salary levels . This is a beautiful model; it allows business to move beyond a command-and-obey method into a truly analytical age. What happens when you give employees (or anyone else for that matter) more leeway to think, to decide and to plan? I'm not even going to suggest an answer.

Why is this important to you? You take control of the writing process when you decide that all projects, whether your own baby or the imposition of another, are ultimately aspects of your own self-employment. It seems ridiculous in a writing course to invoke the basic human right to self-determination, but writing and creativity in general is the only means of being free in a society which won't ever let you take advantage of it without demanding something in return. There is a lot of talk about how this is an age of leisure, how computers have so lessened the time we need to spend on perpetuating the human race and society, that we can spend time watching television and doing the things we want to do. In fact, this "ideal" is almost always talked of in the future tense. This is the premise behind insurance policies, among other things. Yet it is illusory. The man or woman who sits idle day after day soon incurs the wrath at least of those around him or her, if not himself or herself . Note the importance of the term "waste of space". That is one of the words with the most hidden power, "waste". The idea of waste is the idea of spending without benefit, and you start to waste time when you lose sight of what you are achieving or trying to achieve. Consumerism is an interesting term. Fire consumes. Greed, anger or lust consumes. Jealousy consumed Othello. The story of Othello can be seen as a metaphor for the human psyche. It is almost as if Othello needs crisis. In the administrative placidity of Cyprus, (possibly to be conveyed by a modern office block?) he loses the focus. The "weakness" of Shakespeare's dual time scheme can be turned to strength here, to emphasise how so little of import happens in a typical office that petty rivalries and jealousies can assume huge proportions. My take on consumerism is this: War comes when man consumes only what he wants. Peace comes when man consumes only what he needs .

By a roundabout process we come back to my original point, which was about self-reward. A fundamental tenet of religious thought is that voluntary renunciation, however brief and however small, is akin to the return of a prodigal son. In other words, when you admit even for a second that you may still have work to do to earn that rest, when you doubt for the merest second the primacy of your ego in dictating what is best, whether you know it or not, you have turned back to God, and He will shower you with blessings. The fact is, it is also wonderfully addictive. You will find yourself doing more and more with less and less thought of what you might or might not get in return. Slowly, but surely, the focus of your life will change from consumerism to service providership , which, as everybody points out, brings its own rewards. Another fundamental tenet of religious thought is that Jerusalem wasn't builded here in a day. Changing the focus in your life takes time, and we all need to rest sometimes. True rest involves getting over the panic of divine retribution if you don't attain Jesuitic heights. The comforting truth is that we are all miserable sinners before God. The gutter is crowded with the entire human race, so any time at all you can spend star-gazing (contemplating eternal verities such as Truth, Light, Joy, Love) you are building the means to get out of the gutter. Thus, the duty is to encourage others to star-gaze, and to encourage others to help us build our way out of the gutter. Encouragement, co-operation, service. What great principles for a way of life!!

In other words, once you have had an idea, it is important that your first reaction be to write the first draft. The more official you can make this draft, the stronger the idea will be etched into your brain. This is also a way of taking control of a task imposed from without. Going back to the leaflet above, which we decided was probably the result of a particular corporate attitude, it is absolutely vital to note that not only was it the responsibility of the organization, but it was the responsibility of the individual who drafted the document to make sure that the document achieved what it set out to achieve.

Communism and "Communism"

The ideals of the founders of communism were to bring about a just society in which power was not imposed, not wielded like a weapon, but created by consensus. They foresaw a society in which man would co-operate with his fellow man. Throughout the twentieth century though, the ideal of communism was seen as something that had to be imposed. Dictators such as Stalin saw fear as a necessary tool in the excising of greed and excessive consumption. This led to societies where excess consumption was impossible, but did nothing to address the desire for excess consumption, and led to societies in which fear, that most constricting of emotions (check out the science of fear!) was an integral part. In effect Stalin was attempting to impose on society something he thought he had imposed on himself - perfection. The very fact that he was trying to impose something on the outside world shows the extent of his delusion. "Change yourself and you have done your part in changing the world" (PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA). Philosophy teaches us that the healthy state is the fearless state; self-Mastery, where you no longer fear aspects of your own psyche, because you control them. Self-control then means you can offer real service to the world; when you rein in your own consumptive instincts, your own desire for instant progression or accumulation of that which you want, you are then free to consider what else exists in the world besides the fulfilment of your personal desires. If you have never asked yourself this question for a long enough time to listen for an answer, read through this "challenge" chapter again, then go and take a walk into town, or a swim, or any other of your favourite leisure-time pursuits. Personally, I like to sit in the park every now and then. I cannot tell you the answer. I know my answer, but it is only my answer. I don't have your answers, but what I can promise you is that the answer will break forth with immense joy. As soon as you find yourself laughing, you will know you have found an answer.

What's your point about writing, caller?

Writing the first draft of an "imposed" task, such as an essay or a memo, makes that task yours - makes it a challenge from yourself to yourself - a challenge to shape your writing until it addresses the opportunities in the task. No longer then do you have to consider whether you like the teacher or the manager who imposed the task. That becomes irrelevant, a separate issue that you can deal with in different ways. Taking control of the task will only increase your desire to perform the task, especially since you will be stumbling upon your truths by writing that first draft, finding out what makes you tick and performing a fractalised service for yourself. This is the "everyone's a winner" model.

Chapter VII
Elements of the Writing Process

The Physical Process

There are two important points in the physical process of writing; namely where you begin and where you end. Your first draft, as we have seen, is a vital motivational tool in keeping you writing, and of course, your final version (note the change of term) is self-evidently important. The process of how you get from A to B is potentially the most rewarding part, as you see your ideas, thoughts, and language take shape. There may be many different kinds of writing, but, as we saw earlier, there is only one language. Different words have different connotations; a lot of the Romance words in the English language, the longer words from French and Latin and Greek, have connotations of formality, whereas words of a Germanic origin are more likely to have informal vibrations, but the secret to good writing is to mix words from all sources in appropriate measure. This appropriate measure in poetry will be majorly defined by considerations of 'memorability', (one of the more successful definitions of poetry being 'memorable speech'), and in prose by clarity and function. We will consider words in more depth later.

The Psychological Process

One of my biggest regrets is that although at school I had mastered the art of writing to quite a degree, I hadn't mastered the science of writing. I kept escaping with essays; procrastinating and surviving despite the odds. This caused a lot of unrequested unhappiness, and had quite a complex series of "causes", but the effect was the same; I was not approaching the process of writing in a scientific manner. Often the first draft would be left very, very late. This may not have handicapped me insofar as I finally made it into Oxford, but it caused a lot of unnecessary grief. I would approach a typical essay in the following manner

pre-task planning 85%, first draft 5% task completion 10%.

pre-task planning

There is a Grateful Dead song, Lady with a Fan, which tells of the rivalry of a soldier and a sailor, different aspects of the human psyche. For those of you who don't know the song, the premise is that there is a lady who throws her fan into the lions' den, setting down a challenge and setting up her love as a reward ("Which of you to gain me, tell, / Will risk uncertain pains of hell / I will not forgive you / If you will not take the chance"). Quite apart from this drama being played out daily in pubs, clubs, workplaces and other social situations all the world over, for our purposes the lady is a symbol of success, and the act of fan-retrieval the act of writing. It is the sailor who goes after the fan; the soldier "being much too wise: strategy was his (my italics) strength, not disaster". Guess who gets the lady.

Much of pre-task planning is mere procrastination. I used all sorts of excuses and reasons to delay my first drafts but learned one major thing, and that very late; I learned that a duty unbegun hampers all your efforts to avoid it. So, for instance, when as an undergraduate, instead of beginning that essay on Chaucer, I watched the Embassy World Snooker Championships on tv or went to the pub or just sat in my room doing not very much, always in the back of my brain would be the unsettling consciousness that sooner or later I was going to have to start doing work. Not only this, but in fearing the process of doing work, I was actually giving it an aura of impossibility which it really shouldn't have had, which meant that when I came to start it I was hardly ever satisfied with what I was writing, partly as a result of not having very much time and partly as a result of all the fear and negativity I'd been feeding into the task. This had the knock-on effect of making tutorials a nightmare, as often I would turn up without a finished essay, and with the consciousness that nothing I had done that week had been completed to any satisfactory degree. And speaking of unsatisfactory degrees, it reflected in my Lower Second, when I should have been getting a First with room to spare.

How should I have approached it?

It's easy to see now! If I had gone from every tutorial with the express intention of beginning to answer the question, if I had gone and written up my thoughts immediately in first draft form, I would have been able to see clearly what I needed to do in order to mould the draft into a version; I would have found a reason for studying, and I would have been able to reward myself within reason for the work I had done at the end of every day with maybe a pint or two. I would still have been able to lead a social life, but that life and all the other aspects of that life would have been spiritualised by the consciousness of carrying out tasks successfully. Still, it's easy to regret now. These days I write about the past as if writing about a different person - I look back not in anger but merely to remind myself of the lessons of the past.

Doing the first draft immediately has another benefit as well. In procrastinating until the last minute, you are making the amount of time needed automatically100% of the time available. My reasoning for not doing first drafts right away (check this out!) was that "since I'll find enough work revising and tinkering the essay for it to take up the entire time anyway, I may as well not begin it for a while." I was using my non-enjoyment of the work to justify its procrastination, non-enjoyment that sprang from precisely that procrastination! Viciously circular reasoning.

There is one other element to any writing process which we have yet to cover - the supertask. This term is my particular coinage, and refers to the element of any written work which communicates over and above the task. The supertask may be compared to God's reaction to the prodigal son's return; the divine reward for diligence in carrying out a task. This is directly related to service; diligence comes form the Latin diligo, -ere (3) - "I love". Notice how this word has been transmuted in English into meaning hard work. Blending the two meanings together can be revealing. As we have already remarked, everything in life is hard work. Everyone has to have some direction in which to turn their efforts, whether they be employed, unemployed or seeking work. So you have chosen to write. Pour all your energy into completing the task, being as selfless as you possibly can be, and know that there is a Divine power contributing the communication to your readership exactly how much love, effort, service you have put in. Going back to our leaflet, it can reasonably be presumed that someone who was able to read the leaflet could interpret it; the language, although obscure, conforms to a norm for corporatese. It is an example of something where the task, the conveying of information to the reader, has been more-or-less completed, but where the supertask detracts from the task; the task says "here is the information", but the supertask admits "I didn't want to write this leaflet; I didn't write it with you in mind," and similar messages. Our poetic effort, on the other hand, conveys a different message with its supertask; one that again doesn't quite communicate to the reader what a course leaflet should. The problem of the one is that not enough thought has gone into the leaflet's readership, and the challenge to the reader of the other is that that thought contradicts the sense of appropriateness.

The supertask element then is the contribution of the Divine to reward any successful and diligent task-completion in expected and unexpected ways. It is not that you have to believe in God to work this way; you don't have to have believed a thing about what I have been saying in this essay; remember - the law of gravity worked as efficiently before Newton as after him; and not even Einstein has gravity completely worked out.

Chapter VIII
Writer's Block


"You know you can build any prison, any that you choose,
And later discover the prisoner, - the prisoner is you"
The Thompson Twins