I have said many, many times that I can't write, and that journal entries don't count as writing. Here, I said that the difference between Real Writing and journal entries is structure or organization, and Real Writing has it but journal entries don't.

In one sense, that's not accurate; journal-style writing (at least mine) is not especially disorganized, and the process that generates it isn't random. There is a logical progression of ideas from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next, and there is often structure above the paragraph level, with consecutive paragraphs forming a unit that serves some function.

What it doesn't have is a unifying purpose, an ultimate goal, that dictates what you should include and where you should put it. Although it may have some hierarchical structure, it is not a total hierarchy. (What I keep thinking of is a total institution.)

So journal writing can be easily done without planning, and even without an idea of what things you want to say. It can just follow the progression of your thoughts as you think them: one thought suggests the next, which suggests the next, and so on. (I'm thinking of streams here.) It doesn't have to have an introduction or a conclusion, or go anywhere.

Expository writing, on the other hand, does have to have a unified point that dictates its content and structure from the top down, as well as having a natural flow from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. This sounds like it requires planning, maybe the outlining and drafting process that they teach in school.

I don't really know how to make that work. I learned (or didn't) how to write essays by fumbling my way through them from beginning to end, trying to force the black box in my head to come up with something that sounds like an essay, whatever that means, and that's the way I still do it today. It's a painful, seemingly impossible, process: I can't know what the unifying principle of the essay is unless I know what goes in it, and I can't know what goes in it or how to word anything unless I know what it is I'm writing toward. So I just fumble, fumble, stare at the screen, write, erase, stare at the floor, write, change something, change it back, erase, stare at the ceiling, write, erase, become too tired to work and too anxious to sleep.

I was thinking about this yesterday, and I thought about the fact that many people don't formally plan or outline but still write essays fluently. And it occurred to me that what they might be doing is using patterns that they've mastered through practice (like musicians master scales, arpeggios, and chord progressions, or just common sequences of notes that occur in the kind of music they play). These patterns might make it easier to know what you're writing toward, what to include, what angle to take on things, etc., by laying out paths to follow instead of leaving the writer in the middle of the dark, seemingly endless woods.

So what might these patterns be? I had to think through my own experience of writing to come up with them (it was all I had to work with; I would probably be a better writer if I analyzed the structure of others' writing, but I have never actually thought about it). These are the ones I came up with:

• Five-paragraph essay: Make an assertion, give three examples, summarize
  
• Description: Introduce the thing you're describing, describe the aspects of it that are relevant, summarize
  
• Temporal progression: Introduce the thing you're tracking and the trend in its evolution, trace it through time, summarize
  
• Chain of reasoning: Introduce the issue, explain your reasoning (including premises when necessary) from beginning to end, state your conclusion
  
• Evaluating an argument: Introduce the argument, who made it, and why it's important, list aspects of it or cases where it applies and evaluate each one, come to a conclusion on whether/to what extent the argument should be accepted
  
• Reasons why something happens: Introduce the thing and the question of why it happens, list reasons and evidence for their being reasons, either summarize or end with the most significant reason
  
• Compare and contrast: Introduce two things and why you're comparing them, list some aspects of them and for each one, say how the two things are similar, different, or both, possibly summarize
  
• Evaluating multiple points of view: Describe the thing that the points of view are about, list how each point of view sees this thing, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each one, come to a conclusion on what a correct understanding of this thing is

I'm sure there are more of them; I wouldn't actually be surprised if there were a list of them out there somewhere.

These patterns can actually be used as part of other patterns, forming a recursive structure like that of sentences (for example, you could compare and contrast two political philosophies and have one of the points on which you compare them be how they've evolved over time, or you could discuss the reasons why a historical event occurred and spell out the chain of reasoning for why a non-obvious one is true and evaluate two different points of view on whether another one is true). This could probably be made into a grammar. (This thought has made writing (in theory) seem less scary to me; I may not be a writer, but I know how to generate strings from CFGs.)

I think that something I could do to increase my facility for writing would be to practice these until they come naturally.

Do you think you use anything like this, consciously or not, when you write? And can you think of any more patterns?

I once wrote a parody of this poem by Tolkien, and for some reason, I thought of it today. So here it is.

Ai! laurea lanta tyur vilyallo! Yéni únótime ve meldor tyurdo, yéni ve melwa tyur avánier mi oromardi tyurdenóriesse nu Chuck-E-Cheese tellumar yassen cala Anar ve tyur culuina ar cantaina máryanten. Sí casenna mano taltuva i tyur? An sí Chuck-E-Cheese tyurdenóreo ve tyur máryat Aran Tyurdo ortane, ar ilye tier tomper hahtar tyurdeva, ar tyurdenóriello caita mornie i earenna tyurdeva imbe met, ar tyur untúpa nóre sina oiale. Sí culuina ná, tyurdenen culuina, i salque! Namárie! Nai hiruvalye Chuck-E-Cheese. Nai elye hiruva. Namárie!

Ah! golden falls the cheese from the sky! Long years innumerable like the friends of cheese, long years like lovely cheese have passed in the lofty halls in a cheesy land under Chuck-E-Cheese's domes in which the sun shines like cheese, orange and shaped by his hands. Now onto whose head will the cheese fall? For now Chuck-E-Cheese, the King of Cheese, from a cheesy land has uplifted his hands like cheese, and piles of cheese have covered all paths, and out of a cheesy land darkness lies on the sea of cheese between us, and cheese covers this land forever. Now orange, orange because of cheese, is the grass! Farewell! May it be that you find Chuck-E-Cheese. May it be that even you find him. Farewell!

I just learned to do this.

It is SO COOL.

I learned this piece today.

In other news... it seems like I can sort of sight-read on the guitar (without looking at tab). How'd that happen?

I'm already depressed that it's getting darker and colder.

I should start a nerd commune on a tropical island.

Anyone want to join me?

For those of you who have never seen VeggieTales, I present the good part (you don't really need to see the rest).

I didn't know there was any. But there is.

I have always found writing music tedious because drawing all the notes takes a long time. But this makes it a lot easier. I think I'll probably be composing a lot more now.

I found a Japanese site with the text of the Fauré Requiem... so I thought it would be funny to run the Japanese through machine translation and see how it came out.

(An English translation done by a human is here.)

( Read more... )

I'm not sure I'd want that sung at my funeral... but I can imagine people thinking that would be an appropriate thing to commemorate me with. :)

It's interesting that it's programmed to translate certain phrases directly into Latin.

Tonight at the sight-sing, I had to sing my part by myself the entire time. (There were only five people there. There was another soprano, but she sang alto the whole time.)

I didn't die, but I was concentrating so hard (especially on counting) that I got really, really tense. I didn't even notice until, close to the end, I tried to move and realized that it hurt.

I really need to learn how to not do that...

Have any of you guys gotten this? I've gotten it twice so far.

I had an academic anxiety dream last night. My subconscious apparently hasn't gotten the memo that I've been out of school for more than a year...

In my dream, I was back at Oswego High School, and it was a week into the new school year. I realized that I had signed up for a Galician-Portuguese poetry class (what?) but hadn't gone to any classes. I went to the class, hoping that the teacher would forgive me for skipping it for a week. He handed me the syllabus and the first few homework sheets, and I worried that I would need to turn them in the next day and wouldn't be able to finish them all.

I asked him in Spanish if we would have to write any poetry. He answered in English, "What do you think?" which was not helpful.

When I left class, I tried to do the homework, but I couldn't figure out what some of it was asking and I thought I wouldn't have enough time to finish all of it.

Then I walked around outside. There were a bunch of fruit trees that bore fruits that were sort of like cherries but were as big as my fist. Most of the fruits were rotten, but I found one that wasn't and ate it.

Then the Galician-Portuguese poetry class went out to dinner, and three of my classmates started singing "Think of Me" from The Phantom of the Opera and flinging drops of hot wax in my hair.

That was very strange.

diego001 sent us all this puzzle. The whole technical group was occupied with it today.

I spent a long time thinking about it, and I managed to come up with a proof that the probability is 1/2 for all N > 1. It was very satisfying to write "QED" and tape my proof up where people could see it.

It didn't feel the same as doing a school assignment. School assignments are usually stressful and draining; this was just fun. I would have been disappointed with myself if I couldn't prove it, but I wasn't staying up until 2 in the morning trying to force myself to be inspired so that I could finish my homework that was due the next day.

I'm glad I haven't lost my ability to do math.

If there are one or more people on your friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Last night, I couldn't sleep because my brain was rickrolling me.

It's all my uncle's fault... Well, not really. He posted a video of moose, and it somehow showed up in my browser as this Muppets rickroll video:



There's a weird bug in either my browser or LJ that mixes up Youtube videos and other embedded objects. (Once ms_danson posted a DeviantArt picture and it showed up on my friends page as a video of people speaking Chinese and Japanese.)

So basically, my browser rickrolled me. And whenever I hear that song, it gets stuck in my head for days, so my brain rickrolled me too.

It seems the universe is conspiring against me.

(Edit: And this video is now showing up in my browser as that French medieval music video I posted a while back.)

I was wondering where calling someone "grasshopper" (as in "You still have much to learn, grasshopper") came from, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, and found that it came from a 1970s TV show called Kung Fu.

Here's the relevant clip:



kanonole and I have decided that we have to watch it. It's a Western with kung fu in it; how could anyone pass that up?

I also came across this bizarre Japanese toilet training video:



(According to this site (I feel compelled to give a warning for language even though I'm sure none of you really care), the translation in that video is a lot tamer than it should be.)

And that led me to this Japanese kids' show:



This seems really bizarre to me. I guess this is what little kids' "Learn Language X" shows look like to you when it's your own language.

http://carmina.ytmnd.com

You may have to refresh it if the pictures don't match up to the music.

Via bluetourmaline: Park Hall Poesy.

Hilarious.

I went to the sight-sing again last night. It was emotionally taxing not because I didn't know anyone (kanonole was there, and I'm starting to get to know the other people) but because there were only six people there, and so I had to sing by myself about half the time.

I messed up a lot less than I thought I would, but I still made more mistakes than I think is acceptable. (The only thing that's acceptable is perfection, darn it!) At least they didn't shoot me.

My ability to read rhythms is abysmal compared to what it should be; people think I'm a much better sight-reader than I really am because I don't have trouble with pitches. (Really, it's like I cheat. I can't imagine how difficult sight-reading is for people who don't have perfect pitch.)

I guess the only way to get better at it is to keep doing it...

This question is for people who are close to my age.

How much post-WWII history do you know? Were you taught anything after 1945 in school?

In my high school, there were units on the Cold War in both world history and American history classes. (I also know a good amount of 20th century history because I've studied the history of totalitarianism extensively.) But sister_kate said that she was never taught anything after WWII in school, and she doesn't know much more than that the Cold War was going on and that the Korean War and the Vietnam War happened (and she wasn't very accurate with the dates).

(I guess I could generalize this question to everybody by amending it to "how much post-WWII history that happened before you were born, or that you were too young to remember were you taught in school?".)