“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” Mark Twain
When I think about this quote, I illuminate the words ‘easy’, ‘cross out’, and ‘wrong’ in my mind. Why writing is easy? Why Twain thought that there are wrong words that a writer should cross out from the particular piece of his/her writing?
Immediately after, another thought follows these questions: Did he use metaphor in his quote? Is there any more meaning of these two basic sentences?
After all these questions, I realized that he used ‘wrong words’ as a metaphor. Obviously, writing is not easy because there is a long and rough path between thinking and producing words, which are visible marks of our thoughts and relationships between them that understandable for others. This analysis brings me again to the very first of this topic again: How a person’s thinking starts and follows that rough path until producing sentences?
In my case, I started with writing journals to transfer my thoughts that were interested me onto papers because I had struggles in social communication with my close environment in my adolescent period. My seventh grade language teacher was having discussions with me weekly about my journals and asking more questions every week about how to develop ideas regularly in my writings. Then after two semesters full of writings and discussions about journals, I started to realize the way I use to develop my writing: Solving puzzle of a concept. The time that I use for thinking process about how to structure my ideas into my writing was getting grater than what I put onto tabula rasa* which is used as a metaphor for white blank paper.
Tabula rasa is defined as ‘the mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions’ in Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n.d.). I always see the life, and incidences and experienced in it as little jigsaw puzzles to fill my tabula rasa. I need to understand their structure and it always amazes me how all the structures can differ between different sources of knowledge in the life, so every experience has a unique mark in my mind. I used this jigsaw solve-the-abstract-structure model into my writings as well, by following these seven steps: (a) Find the concept that interests you and think about the plot; (b) read or reach the sources that you can use to fully understand the topic; (c) relate different parts of topic to each other; (d) define the topic wisely and start to write your thoughts randomly; (e) put in order the thoughts to produce coherence; (f) eliminate the irrelevant thoughts or sentences which reduces the effect of thoughts and relation between them; and (g) reread the writing after a certain time to revise the terms. I always like twofold words or thoughts and link them. Sometimes it becomes full of metaphors of mixture of my knowledge from diverse sources, which is a little jigsaw I prepare for the reader. However, this life-grounded method that I used in every particular writing piece in my life has lack of adjustment in academic writing. Since we are learning how to frame our writing theoretically and conceptually in our professional works, I see that I have to shift my thinking method into a little more professional way of thinking. Synthesized learning from chapters I, II, and III in Reason and Rigor, and discussions in the class are made me think about how to reflect my ideas properly and harmonious to write professional papers which are clear to readers as they are in my mind’s path. How to use others’ expertise into my work by shifting my way of thinking into a researcher’s one becomes my new jigsaw to solve in this particular class.
To summarize, I believe as a true beginner for ‘academic’ critical thinker for writing, I need to revise my way of thinking by using more metacognitive skills by blending of reflection of the sources I read about others’ masterpieces and manipulation of my experiences in my piece of professional writing. Then it would be possible for me to achieve what Twain says between the lines in his quote: We need to investigate the thoughts and to dig out the relations between them carefully for creating valuable marks on a white page.
References
Tabula Rasa [Def. 1]. (n.d.). In Merriam Webster Online, Retrieved September 22, 2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tabula%20rasa
When I think about this quote, I illuminate the words ‘easy’, ‘cross out’, and ‘wrong’ in my mind. Why writing is easy? Why Twain thought that there are wrong words that a writer should cross out from the particular piece of his/her writing?
Immediately after, another thought follows these questions: Did he use metaphor in his quote? Is there any more meaning of these two basic sentences?
After all these questions, I realized that he used ‘wrong words’ as a metaphor. Obviously, writing is not easy because there is a long and rough path between thinking and producing words, which are visible marks of our thoughts and relationships between them that understandable for others. This analysis brings me again to the very first of this topic again: How a person’s thinking starts and follows that rough path until producing sentences?
In my case, I started with writing journals to transfer my thoughts that were interested me onto papers because I had struggles in social communication with my close environment in my adolescent period. My seventh grade language teacher was having discussions with me weekly about my journals and asking more questions every week about how to develop ideas regularly in my writings. Then after two semesters full of writings and discussions about journals, I started to realize the way I use to develop my writing: Solving puzzle of a concept. The time that I use for thinking process about how to structure my ideas into my writing was getting grater than what I put onto tabula rasa* which is used as a metaphor for white blank paper.
Tabula rasa is defined as ‘the mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions’ in Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n.d.). I always see the life, and incidences and experienced in it as little jigsaw puzzles to fill my tabula rasa. I need to understand their structure and it always amazes me how all the structures can differ between different sources of knowledge in the life, so every experience has a unique mark in my mind. I used this jigsaw solve-the-abstract-structure model into my writings as well, by following these seven steps: (a) Find the concept that interests you and think about the plot; (b) read or reach the sources that you can use to fully understand the topic; (c) relate different parts of topic to each other; (d) define the topic wisely and start to write your thoughts randomly; (e) put in order the thoughts to produce coherence; (f) eliminate the irrelevant thoughts or sentences which reduces the effect of thoughts and relation between them; and (g) reread the writing after a certain time to revise the terms. I always like twofold words or thoughts and link them. Sometimes it becomes full of metaphors of mixture of my knowledge from diverse sources, which is a little jigsaw I prepare for the reader. However, this life-grounded method that I used in every particular writing piece in my life has lack of adjustment in academic writing. Since we are learning how to frame our writing theoretically and conceptually in our professional works, I see that I have to shift my thinking method into a little more professional way of thinking. Synthesized learning from chapters I, II, and III in Reason and Rigor, and discussions in the class are made me think about how to reflect my ideas properly and harmonious to write professional papers which are clear to readers as they are in my mind’s path. How to use others’ expertise into my work by shifting my way of thinking into a researcher’s one becomes my new jigsaw to solve in this particular class.
To summarize, I believe as a true beginner for ‘academic’ critical thinker for writing, I need to revise my way of thinking by using more metacognitive skills by blending of reflection of the sources I read about others’ masterpieces and manipulation of my experiences in my piece of professional writing. Then it would be possible for me to achieve what Twain says between the lines in his quote: We need to investigate the thoughts and to dig out the relations between them carefully for creating valuable marks on a white page.
References
Tabula Rasa [Def. 1]. (n.d.). In Merriam Webster Online, Retrieved September 22, 2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tabula%20rasa