Usually, we can get along in most of our everyday routines and informal conversations with simple "small talk" (social-bonding pleasantries and clichés) and by exchanged narratives (gossip, discussions of current sports, movies, tv programs). For example, many students chat online (facebook.com and other social networking sites), typing away for hours in a shared back-and-forth conversation, but without any overall control, structure, or organization. Such social-bonding has many delightful rewards of its own, but we really don't have to organize our thoughts very often.
Seldom do we have to do the sustained, focused, coherent, and systematic
intellectual work as is needed in large tasks and abstract thinking.
Writing helps us to develop these intellectual skills: it forces us to focus
attention, to plan, to organize, to structure, and to clarify the relationships
among our ideas.
Writing takes time and it demands a mental effort, uncommon in our daily routines.
Sometimes when people complain that they "don't like to write," they're
reacting against this discipline which forces them to organize their thoughts.
Or, they may be unable to write well (because they've had so little practice or experience ) and embarrassed or frustrated because of their inability. They feel they should have this knowledge or ability or discipline, but they don't.
Consequently, they divert attention, procrastinate, make up
excuses, or are afraid to say that writing is hard, or that they can't do it.
If you share some of these feelings, you should recognize that writing does
demand an uncommon mental effort, because writing is the transforming
process by which an active mind imposes order upon chaos.
Composition textbooks and courses usually concentrate on giving good advice
about some common and important parts of this process: about comparison ("keep
things parallel, emphasize similarities"); about classification
("don't cross-categorize") and division ("emphasize differences");
about definition, cause-and-effect, and other relationships - all very useful
bits of advice.
Here, however, I want to emphasize three mental processes usually not mentioned
in composition texts: attention, orientation, and alternation.
Perhaps these are assumed to be so self-evident ("everybody
knows that") that other authors seldom mention them. But, whether you
use this website on a self-study basis, or in a course, I call these mental
processes to your attention because you'll benefit here by thinking about your
own thinking processes.
1. Attention. Observe.
Understand. Judge. In that order! Psychologist Carl Rogers alerted us
that many of our problems in communication come from our tendency to judge
before we understand, or even see what's out there. His principles apply
here also. Whenever we analyze ads, we have to observe first, to pay
attention, to focus in on, to attend to, to concentrate on, to read carefully,
to listen closely, to watch intensely.
No matter how it's phrased, attention is primary. First,
we must look and listen, and observe closely what is said and shown. We don't
always do this. We've seen thousands of ads, for example, but without really
paying attention to them.
Understanding is next: what are the parts and their purposes, how
are the parts related to each other and to the whole, how does the item compare
or contrast to others, in what categories does it belong, and so on.
2. Orientation,
as used here, means knowing where you are, and what you are doing: a self-awareness
in time and space, of where any specific thing fits into a larger pattern,
either of a class of related things or as part of a process.
Orientation implies that you know the parts of a thing or of a process. Orientation
also implies that you have an overall sense of the whole, of "the big picture,"
even though you'll always be in a specific spot and working on a specific part.
Whether you're analyzing an ad, or writing an essay, ideally you should have
a sense of your goal, of the whole project, of the various parts, and of where
you are in the overall process.
Orientation is a matter of degree. Most people have some sense of the
territory, of geography, of where they are in the physical world. Yet, recent
reports about the number of high school graduates who can not even identify
"easy" items on a map (the 50 states, or the major nations of Europe)
suggest that many people still need to increase their degree of such basic spatial
orientation.
Temporal orientation may be even more troublesome because it's even more
abstract. However, we do need a sense of time: of our own personal time, of
a time-line of history, or some kind of historical perspective. We also need
to have a sense of where we are in a sequential process, from beginning to end.
Orientation often gets complex and confusing because we are always in flux,
in change, and involved simultaneously in many different kinds of things
and many different processes.
Practically speaking, we learn by experience how to juggle our daily routine
schedules so that we get things done. But, whenever we get involved in a new
project, such as a major writing assignment, there are some things we can do
to work more efficiently.
Before you start a project, orient yourself by advance preparation and planning.
First, identify your overall purpose, then your immediate short-term goals:
what parts have to be done, and in what sequence. Make a "map" - an
outline, checklist, or flow-chart.
After you finish any major part of the project, orient yourself by summarizing what you've done, and what needs to be done next.
Again, use a checklist or an outline, make notes, or say it out loud to yourself, anything that keeps you aware of what you're doing. Lawyers, for example, keep "time logs" by the quarter-hour of their mental activity, a very intangible process, so they have some kind of record of it, for themselves and their clients, who get billed for it.
3. Alternation, as used
here, means a conscious awareness when you shift back and forth from a very
close-up focus on a specific part (e.g. writing a sentence, or
focusing on one aspect of an ad) to a broad wide angle view of
the whole.
Normally, you shift your attention back and forth unconsciously,
but it would often help if this alternation were a conscious one,
so that you would have a greater sense of control, of knowing where you are,
and what you are doing. Commonly, several problems occur: you can be too specific,
too general, or confused.
You can be too specific. You can lose your perspective, always involved
in the details, lose sight of the whole, of the big picture, of the goal, of
the wider context. You can't see the forest because of the trees. This is a
common problem, and very understandable, because you are often so busy paying
attention to getting the details right. You can sometimes spend so much effort
working on one sentence, or on one idea, that you get distracted from an overall
sense of where it fits into the whole.
You can be too general. You can rely on vague generalities and high-level
abstractions (e.g. "democracy," "secular humanism," "company
policy," or "neo-structuralism"), which may have an intense
personal meaning, but which are not clear to others unless you show what you
mean by specific examples. Or, you can write a long series of abstract sentences,
each one true in itself, but which can accumulate and confuse a reader because
the explanatory examples and transitions cues were left out.
You can be confused. You can lack coherence by randomly
shifting among the various parts, or unconsciously shifting from
generalities to specifics, unaware of what you are doing.
Often people will "Just start writing" and work very hard, but their effort isn't directed or coherent. After a while, they "run out of steam," or "go in circles." (Problems so common, we have clichés for them.) When "free writing" is recommended by textbooks as a way of getting started, or breaking out of a "writer's block," it's usually assumed that such writing is just the first draft, needing later revision.
In good writing, there's usually an ebb and flow alternation between generalities and specifics. For example, you commonly may write a topic sentence and then follow it with a specific, concrete example to illustrate or clarify it. Although this may be habitual or unconscious now, pay more attention to this process as you compose. So also, when analyzing ads, try to be more aware when you apply a general principle to a specific ad, or when you see a specific ad as illustrating a general principle.
To recap: as you analyze ads or compose your own work, first pay attention (observing closely). Then, try to be more self-aware of your own mental processes of orientation (knowing where you are, what you are doing) and alternation (shifting focus).
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