Yeah, you’re not good enough at it to do that.
Novels are art. English teachers are not teaching you how to write as an art form. This is because our schools are designed to make good little worker bees. They are teaching you language so that you can then go on to learn technical writing. Now, I do think they should split the two apart, and let kids experiment and have fun with writing. That does not mean that they are wrong. Technical writing requires precision and a strict adherance to rules. It is the same concept as it being entirely fine to have a bit of fun when painting a mural, but not when you’ve been hired to paint someones house.
I’m gonna say it: Jack Kerouac sucks. I’ve read many different authors, but none have been as annoyingly unreadable as him. You’re supposed to “ride the wave of his thoughts?”. No thanks. To me, that just sounds like a vain excuse for bad writing.
If you’re going to the trouble of writing something, my assumption is that you want to communicate. We can only communicate clearly with each other, if we all agree on and use the same word spellings and grammar rules. Otherwise, why bother?
One of the more frustrating things I see daily is titles that don’t make it clear whether OP is asking a question, or about to present an explanation.
“Why my dogs throw up in the house” instead of “Why do my dogs throw up in the house*?*”
(I don’t know how to italicize the question mark.)
You need to know the rules to know how to break them with intention.
Students when English teacher get pregnant and she’s off for this year. Again.
Irvine Welsh has entered the chat.
Also:
English Teachers: “Lets now analyze and decode the deeper meaning the author meant in chapter 23 paragraph 6” Authors: “There was supposed to be a deeper meaning?”
Death of the Author is real and the creator doesn’t really matter once the art is finished.
Sometimes the curtains are just blue
And sometimes they’re not. The point is to know how to recognize when there’s a difference.
Authors: “There was supposed to be a deeper meaning?”
English Teachers: “You are already dead"
Authors: “There was supposed to be a deeper meaning?”
English Teachers: “You are already dead"
Salman Rushdie: “I know that was figurative, but it still hurts!”
Salman Rushdie:“I support genocide and zionist fascism!”
Being able to analyze a piece of writing for authorial intent, conscious and unconscious, intentional and unintentional, is a good skill to have.
That’s not even getting into understanding metaphor, simile, and symbolism in writing which can also show the author’s intent and how the author views topics.
A fun little example by me:
I was velociraptoring around the kitchen at 2am.
The cheese cried out, but it’s pleas fell on deaf ears.
There’s a lot that can be interpreted from those 2 sentences. Why was it written? What does it describe? What metaphors are deployed and why? What symbolism is used? Why was symbolism used? How does the writing make you feel? What was the author doing in their kitchen at 2am? How does the author view their actions at 2am? And on, and on, and on the analysis can go. And it only stops when you choose to get off of Mr Bone’s Wild Ride.
Now a less fun example is the kind of language someone might deploy when describing a group of people they do not like. How would a fascist report on a crime? A new food bank? The results of a sporting event? The release of a new video game? A new movie? Etc, etc, etc.
Being able to parse media is the biggest defense against being manipulated by propaganda.
So take the time to take a proper gander at the media you see and consume.
EDIT: TLDR Media Literacy is a learned skill that anyone can and should learn and practice.
EDIT2: me seeing the results of praising media literacy in an anti-media literacy thread
Well that, at least, makes sense in that it’s really just an exercise in finding evidence for your argument.
