In praise of bad writing

Another great thing about comedy is that it teaches us to love our flaws. But unlike the positive thinking or self-esteem movements, comedy doesn't just teach us to overcome our imperfections--it shows how our flaws are always already our strengths. The worst things about us are already the best things about us, simply in an inverted form. And our bad writing is already our good writing, just in a distorted form. The key task of a writer is to transform the anti-genius of the bad into the the genius of the good. It's like learning to recognize the great things about movies that are so bad they are good.

Here's a few things to ponder today as we free ourselves to "write bad."

First, consider how bad first drafts are the gateway to good ones. 

Second, consider how embracing our bad writing can be freeing.

Finally, consider the ways that bad writing is not all that different from good writing. What makes bad writing bad often has to do with the attitude of the writer. The writer is not communicating to others, but having an internal dialogue. There is nothing wrong about this. It simply suggests that we need to start having a dialogue with others, rather than giving a monologue. Even though the other person is silent, we should think of all writing as a conversation. The essence of a conversation is to see every statement as serving to bring the other person deeper into the topic, to entrance them, to wow them.

Bad writing is common. Very bad writing is uncommon for the same reason that very good writing is uncommon: it does something impressive. It fails in a way that is spectacular and risky.

As a wise man once said...

The struggle is real...

Essay Three: Participating in the Conversation

For essay three, we will continue to build on the work we have done in the first two papers. We will still focus on rooting the paper in significant details. The majority of the paper will still offer detailed explanations and justifications of your main claim, based in analysis of the specific details of your sources. We will also again use scholarly sources to help build more significant and refutable claims. 

While paper three still will use all these same major skills and tools as the last paper, it will aim to further challenge you by asking you to incorporate more sources into your argument. Using one source is relatively simple as you can simply apply its insights to whatever you are analyzing. In using more than one source, however, you must not only explain your relationship to your sources but explain the relationship among the different sources. This creates a significantly more challenging task. 

To tackle paper three, you will need not only to understand and apply your sources but quickly to establish how they fit together. This will require offering your own sense of what the consensus on an issue is. Find the three scholarly sources on your topic that seem most authoritative, insightful, and helpful. Look for sources that are cited by other sources and that other scholars consider influential and important to understanding the issue. For this assignment, picking good sources will be just as important as developing a clear, refutable, and significant thesis, and it will be much easier to develop a good thesis with the assistance of good sources. 

Establish your own sense of how these all fit together. Then situation your own argument within this conversation. What does the current scholarly consensus seem to agree on? What does it not agree on? What areas have the existing scholars overlooked? Rather than attacking or simply dismissing the existing scholarly consensus, focus on building on it and entering into the conversation it sustains. Look for ways in which you can contribute to the conversation by extending insights in ways that the existing research has not considered. Look for ways in which you can push the conversation into new territory that it has not yet discussed. Situate your own argument in the debates and concepts that the existing scholarship employs. Show how your own argument is significant in light of the existing research. 

This essay should be 1500-1700 words long, formatted in the standard Times New Roman 12 point font with 1 inch margins. Include at least three peer-reviewed sources. Bring a rough draft to class Friday, November 2. The final essay is due Friday, November 9, and 12 pm. 

What was Hutcheson responding to?

Not just thinking about comedy, but a comedic poem itself: The Grumbling Hive.