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not any idiot can writer... [What Are Writing Skills?]
Subject:not any idiot can writer... [What Are Writing Skills?] From:shankAtIndiaDotcom <ss_rajanala -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 22 Feb 2005 10:56:55 -0800 (PST)
I am going to go off on a tangent here, so you
are warned.
My mentor at cadence had this screen saver:
not any idiot can writer... it takes a special
kind.
[He probabbly meant, one who can assume the
persona of a putative idiotic user.]
Then there was alexander pope and the infamous
'what was oft thought and never so well
expressed' [ahh, if you thought, then it had some
expression already; whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must remain silent?]
So writing, understanding, and analysis are
intertwined, methinks - in a way that you cannot
and should not be torn apart.
What we write is dictated by (no, not engineers
please) what readers are likely to wish to know.
That means we analysis (or think like) the
reader: now that part of it is also writing,
isn't it?
Having writ, we move on to another section: what
is the reader going to look for next? That is
more analysis; that too, is writing, no?
> saying of a cook, "I mean,
> vegetable chopping aside, if the chef knows the
> food and the dinner
> guests, isn't the real need meal planning, not
> cooking?"
>
Nah, that was a bad analogy.
I'd go with wilde; the writer got all the
technical stuff, now he is putting the writing on
it.
[The building is all done; they are putting
architecture on it - says wilde's
man-on-the-street looking at masons putting up a
facade.]
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