palmari

Because this is a blog about writing, it would be appropriate to include some steps for how to write. 
And because I have a huge paper due in less than 24 hours, it would be inappropriate to be posting things on the internet right now, but I'm also hopelessly trying to distract myself and this is a much more worthwhile diversion than facebook is.

And since I'm currently experiencing the writing steps, I have experience in the field, and as such, I will share my excellent action plan for this paper.  Prepare to be enlightened:

Final Draft Action Plan

in order to make your paper thoroughly excellent and satisfy readers everywhere

1. Read through all previous drafts (in my case, I had two and a half)
1. analyze what's working and what's missing in each draft
2. Outline each draft (organize what you already have)
3. Outline your final draft
4. Quilt the final draft using the best elements from previous drafts
5. Submit final draft to friends and colleagues for editing/criticism
1. For me, I'm also going to focus on getting feedback from my intended audience (as my paper is of the persuasive nature)
6. Make any alterations necessary
7. Conduct a killer assessment of the final draft. 
1. Ensure all arguments are balanced 
2. Ensure all 2,000 words are quality words to make your grandmother proud
1. Some would say "reduce lard".  Yes, reduction of lard is important, but your paper will be trim and powerless if it doesn't have some Olympic-worthy  muscles.  
2. Feed your paper protein shakes.
3. Ensure that everything is amazing
4. Ask yourself if you could have done a better job on anything
8. Polish the final draft.  Transform it into a Masterpiece Draft
1. Use of gamma radiation is allowed
9. Submit the paper to the professor.
1. Or, since you've worked so hard on it, go ahead and just publish it to the world.  It's ready.
10. Success!
1. Notice how "Success" is step number ten?  It's very important that step ten always be "success".
2. Even if there are more than ten steps in a process.  You should have succeeded by step ten.

Now you all know how to create a Masterpiece Draft.

I find it appropriate that I'm doing this on Halloween.  I'm like Doctor Frankenstein, and my paper...is coming ALIVE....

ignotum

Once again, this post is a bit of a sequel to the one previous...

Perhaps it's just a clever scheme to make people read more posts, making them sequentially related.
Muahaha.

Anyway.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

It's something that I've been realizing on occasions here in univeristy...you spend so much of your life learning things like how to count in Binary and synonyms for the word "loquacious" and the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, but secretly every class teaches me that there's really quite a lot out there yet to be explored, be it by me or by anyone else.  There's a lot that I don't know, and there's also a lot that nobody knows.

I mean, just think of all the knowledge that is contained in one library.  Especially if you're at a university with a massive library.  There is a lot of information in there.  So much that we can't even store it all--we have to use online archives for much of it.
Now think of all the things that aren't in books or on the internet.  If you're skeptical, go ahead and read a wikipedia article or a book (superfast) and when you're done, tell me whether you had more questions answered, or more questions arise that you never knew you had.

If you're me, you read an article on the pinky finger as a vestigial structure, and now you're wondering just how important pinky fingers actually are...how often are they used now?  What made them so useful long ago before we had keyboards and video games to make our fingers so dexterous?  Could all those menial tasks of the past like plowing and spinning wool and cobbling and coopering and smithing really have required the use of a pinky finger?
When in reality...nobody ever thinks about fingers that much, until they learn about them.

See how abnormal knowledge makes us?

Anyway.
What's the point of it all?  All this endeavor to learn things and become an expert in some field and to research more and more to find out new things, when really all of our experimentation and learning is only to find out new questions.

Truly, the more educated we are, the more we realize just how ignorant we are.

sciens

I was reminded the other day why I once wanted to become a writer.

I had been writing nothing in particular (Wendesday's post, in fact) and when I was finished, I had about eight or nine tabs across the top of my computer to various websites where I had been fact-checking, quoting, appeasing my curiosity, and other minor forms of research I had been conducting while writing.  

The reason why I once wanted to write was because I was under the impression that writers knew at least something about everything.

And if there's something a writer did not know about, they would learn about it as they wrote about it.  Thereby becoming even more knowledgeable.  It's pretty great, really.

See, in order to know something about almost everything, you have to be perpetually learning something about almost anything.  And what better way to learn things than by writing about them?  The act of writing about something makes you think about it in new ways that you wouldn't necessarily consider otherwise.  And then you have questions that you normally wouldn't consider.  Like "Does it make sense for Robin Hood to be eating bacon in thirteenth century England?  Did they have pigs back then?  Would that have been practical for someone of the outlaw/yeoman class?"  So then you look it up.

It's like Sesame Street always said: "Asking questions is a great way to find things out."

Things have since changed, but that doesn't mean that you have to be a writer by profession in order to write.  This blog is one such example.  :)  Hooray!

mirabili

To be honest,  I have no idea what this post is going to be about.

Normally these posts are somewhat pre-meditated, in the sense that the topic has crossed my mind on more than one occasion, and I have had time to consider what I would say here on the internet concerning that topic.

Today is different.

But upon switching tabs to Facebook just barely, my mind has picked up the topic of Alice in Wonderland.  This is a story written by Lewis Carroll, also known as Charles Dodgson.  Under his alias of "Charles Dodgson", Lewis Carroll did math.  He actually made some very influential discoveries in the fields of geometry, matrices, and logic.  But that has little to do with meta-writing, despite how interesting it is.

What does have to do with writing is Alice in Wonderland and the Jabberwocky.  These are pieces of writing.  I have read Jabberwocky many a time, and I've even sung it.  It's a lovely arrangement.  Listen to it now.  (Pay attention to the drum on the offbeats.  I love it.) I've seen the Alice movies (both Disney versions) but unfortunately have not read the book.  This is something that I desire to do, however I have not managed to find a good version of it yet.  The public library only had abridged versions of it in the children's section.  Oh, public library...how could you fail me?  Perhaps I should renew my search...one day...when I have a surplus of time... :P

Anyway.  Wonderland is an intriguing topic.  Alice gets there accidentally, and it's a wonderful place with cats and hatters and red roses.  Then the cartoon version and the more recent version kindof diverge...The remake was less of an Alice in Wonderland and more of a Lewis Carroll's WonderMind to me...which is perhaps why I loved it so thoroughly.  Either way, Alice ends up leaving Wonderland for some reason or another.  And this is unfortunate.  But it's not uncommon.  The Pevensies leave Narnia, Dorothy leaves Oz...no matter who you are, when you accidentally find yourself in a fantasic realm, you want to go home.  Silly, silly...

But I think this ties in to the concept of Utopia. Which in addition to being a concept is also a book.  I'll have to add that one to my reading list as well...

Anyway.  The word "utopia" is a fascinating one to me.  I don't know why, but I love etymology.  So here's some for you:  Although the phrase was originally coined in a book written in Latin, "utopia" is a Greek word, literally meaning "no place".  It has adopted a double meaning, however, due to the word "eu", meaning "good" (euphemism, anyone?), which sounds very much like "oú", the original greek work meaning "not".  Because of the similarity in pronunciation, the word has taken on both meanings: "good place" and "no place".

And certainly the fantastic realms of Oz and Narnia and Wonderland are far from utopic, with evil queens and witches...but it still seems to me that each of them is far more ideal  and exciting than any of the worlds the children left.  So why do they always come home?    Perhaps because they are children and need a place of safety and comfort, away from responsibility and confusion.

But I think there is also some sort of aversion to wonderful places.  Because we all know that Utopia doesn't actually exist.  Even when we're children, we know that it's too good to be true and we have to go home and address the sorrows we left there.  Even after we've vanquished the queen of hearts, the white witch, and the wicked witch of the west, we still leave the world that we fixed to return to a world which we have not yet fixed.  Which in a way, accomplishes nothing.  Yet we still do it.  No matter how much we should want to live in a utopia, home is still where we want to belong.

And In reality, I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this post, but it has been quite enlightening.

Thank you.

verus

Everybody wants to hear the truth, but nobody wants to write it.
And the times that I want to expose the truth and take action on it, I know that it won't be welcome, and I'll regret it eventually.

Oh, facebook drama.

nemo

Nemo is reading my blog.

I wish I was under the illusion that people were frequenting the blog, because then I would be encouraged to post more often (ie: the thrice-weekly goal...)

I'm surprised that several of the latter posts have no views at all.  I thought at least my English teacher would be taking a glance from time to time, since it's for class credit...

But really.  Why publish if you have no audience?