Writing is determined more by your attitude toward two things, two things that you may have not thought much about, rather than toward a lot of things you may have been told and taught to think a lot about in the past. These two things are constraints and images. Constraints are the rules upon which is built the grammar of the essay. Images are a kind of constraint, but grammar is mind-related while images appeal directly to the senses. Good writing has this balance, which is actually a pattern of intellectual and emotional movement between mind and sense, between the mental and physical worlds we inhabit.
"What a grammar is to language, a constitution is to liberty."
— Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)
The great American patriot Thomas Paine was an undisputed champion of liberty. Paine was also a believer in the need for writing to establish liberty into law. These days the very idea of a society based upon law is under attack. Perhaps one reason for such skepticism is that few people have an understanding of how constraints are related to liberty. Since people seem to have little understanding of what grammar is, turn Paine's analogy around:
What a constitution is to liberty, grammar is to language.
Of course, no analogy is perfect, but a good analogy reveals meaning. It is often worth re-enforcing the Idea of structure through an exploration of analogies. Making the connection of grammar with games is one way: people cannot play a game without agreeing upon the rules.
Another analogy is with dining. Sitting around the table for a Thanksgiving dinner is different from sitting at the same table for a morning meal during the rush to get everyone off to school and work. How similar is this situation to Writing?
Perhaps now it is easier to see the connection between restraint, agreed upon rules, and freedom. Rules make games possible. They define the boundaries that separate the game from any and every thing else. If the rules are not recognized, the game cannot be played. Grammar operates in much the same way with writing. If the rules are not recognized, we can still write, but without some recognition of the rules, we cannot know when it is necessary to change the rules so that the game of writing is not only more fun but also more serious. Games can be serious; in fact playing them so seriously makes them more fun, more satisfying. Writing can be approached in the same manner. The more game-like it is, the more serious and satisfying it becomes.
A constitution is, of course, more than a game. So is writing. Our constitution, though a short and seemingly simple document, demands an elaborate interpretive organization of courts, judges and lawyers, laws and precedents, and the common consent of the citizens to recognize the governance of the constitution, its importance to our history and social cohesiveness. Our grammar has many of these same qualities. It changes, but it changes slowly. There is an elaborate interpretive organization of schools, teachers and students, books which establish precedents in terms of usage, and the common consent of the people to recognize the need for some form(s) of correct usage.
CONSTRAINTS (Grammar) and IMAGES are what this course is all about.
REPEAT: Constraints and images are what this course is all about.
Repeat: Constraints and images are what this course is all about.
"When a constraint exists, advantage can usually be taken on it." — W. Ross Ashby, An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956)
If you accept this insight by the scientist W. Ross Ashby, I think you will come to understand why writing style is so important. It is only because there are limits to what and how we write that it is possible to write with style, and what is style but a working knowledge that writing can be both powerful and beautiful? Can power and beauty exist without pattern and constraint?
Let me try one more example. Below is a drawing made by one of my children, my son Jason, when he was four years old. He drew the picture as well as he did because the odd sized paper helped him. He was constrained, and thereby focused. He used the unusual paper to make an unusual drawing. Not bad for a four-year-old. The contraint was the "grammar" of his drawing. [Note: the word in the background is "Spidy" for Spiderman. It is reversed because he wanted it to be read through a window.]
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