The Tyranny of Very Good Writing

A Post-Academic in New York City has an interesting post up about thesis statements and how they undermine good writing.

I don't disagree with this, nor with PAINYC's conclusion: "It’s better to teach students – and to remind ourselves – to admire ambivalence and contradiction and to think of writing as a way to cultivate those things, not abolish them. That is what very good writing – a rare and beautiful thing – should be: a reflection of a commitment to knowing nothing at all and to writing forever into that void."

To be clear: I am not currently teaching writing and don't ever expect to be doing so again. However, I did teach it for going on a decade, and one of the things I never really resolved was how to teach students what "very good writing" is at the same time I was teaching them pragmatic ways of tackling the kinds of writing tasks that would most likely be required of them in other college courses and beyond.

Because "very good writing" as PAINYC describes it above -- and I basically agree with this definition -- is not the kind of decent, clear, concise, good-but-not-great writing nonacademic, nonliterary, non-artistic, non-scholarly writers need to practice.

When I was transitioning out of academe, before I started the secretary gig at Think Tank, I had a few interviews for writer/editor jobs. When these would-be employers asked for writing samples, I was somewhat surprised that they didn't want examples of "very good writing." They wanted mundane things. They wanted to see my course policies, assignment sheets, one-pager handouts, not my published academic papers or creative experiments. They didn't want ambivalence and contradiction. They wanted clarity, simplicity, and precision.

When I write today at the Petting Zoo, ambivalence and contradiction are not the goals. While I'm certainly not under the tyranny of a thesis statement or any other such formulaic bullshit, I also do have specific things I need to communicate. Putting together a report starts with a question or set of questions. With collaborators, I collect data with the objective of answering those questions. We analyze the data and draw conclusions. Writing the report requires communicating what we found -- answering the questions. While answering those questions might lead to other questions and other research and other reports, the task of writing itself in any given report is the opposite of generating ambivalence and contradiction, unless the research itself is inconclusive, in which case we still have to communicate that inconclusiveness in clear and understandable language.

So, as someone who appreciates and values and studies "very good writing," I struggled, as a writing teacher, with reconciling how to get students to at least recognize "very good writing," if not practice it, and how at the same time to cultivate the kinds of "decent" writing skills they would most likely have to practice in the rest of their college and professional lives.

Staring into the void of writerly oblivion is a beautiful thing, but it's also dangerous, especially if your goal is to get out of academe. It's a lot like staring at the sun. Before you know it, you won't be able to see anything at all.

"Isn't there anything you're passionate about?"

At a happy hour, one of my new Petting Zoo colleagues asked me this question: "Aren't you passionate about anything?" I was somewhat taken aback. Why, what could ze mean? Do I have to be passionate about something? If so, am I supposed to proselytize?

 I'm not sure I've been passionate about anything since my earliest years as a graduate student before academe's shine wore off. I think there was maybe that paper I wrote back in 2004. I was very passionate about turning that into my very first peer-reviewed publication. And then I published a few more and nobody cared. The butterfly flapped its proverbial wings and nothing happened. Oh, and I was pasionate about teaching, too. For a while. Until it became impossible to continue doing it without being a financial burden on other people.

 YaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwawnZzzzZzzzzZzzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzzz.

Passion hasn't really been particularly useful as a life strategy for me.

 My goals these days are much simpler and less stressful than being passionate about something: 1) not be bored, and 2) earn a living wage while not being bored.

 So far so good!

All in all, not a bad show ...

The conference is officially over. I managed to escape the closing reception after only two drinks and early enough to get a full night's sleep before heading out in the morning to fly back East.

Schmoozing went well. Met some potential collaborators who are interested in just the things the Petting Zoo is hoping to develop in months to come. And learned -- as I've been suspecting -- that the Great Problem of Our Time is social, cultural, and political rather than scientific. The Problem isn't a lack of information or understanding but a lack of credibility and trust.

Why? And what to do about it? Those are the questions we need to be asking ...

Also, Enviro Shark and I did have a chance to talk, and my suspicions about the tensions between Expanding Habitats and Survival in Captivity were not figments of my imagination. While I feared I was being paranoid, in fact I was spot on. But the good thing is that Enviro Shark now "gets" where I'm coming from, and I think we have a solid alliance that will prove useful in the weeks ahead as far as settling the tensions and moving forward.

All in all, a pretty decent conference experience. Wish I had more time to see the sights, as it is beautiful out here in the mountains, but I am looking forward to going home.

Godammit!

I was hoping to make it through an entire conference for once without anyone mentioning Foucault. But godammit, somebody had to go and do it yesterday! One more day to go ...

Perverse

I cannot tell anyone at this conference that I used to work at Think Tank. They'd spit in my face or throw their drink at me or something.

I realized this yesterday when I was talking to someone, telling hir about the Petting Zoo, how I had just started there recently, and how Expanding Habitats was an awesome program. Then ze asked, "What did you do before Petting Zoo?"

I opened my mouth and was about to say I worked at Think Tank, and then I looked at hir and thought about what hir work was and what people had been talking about all afternoon, and I just said, "Oh, I was at Grad U doing a PhD and then teaching for a bit after."

It's weird, let me tell ya. And the road ahead will be difficult. Because, you see, one of the goals of Expanding Habitats is to get people talking to each other. But if people on either side of this issue loathe each other so much that someone who merely worked as a secretary, briefly, for the "wrong" side is tainted goods, that's a problem. And it is, I can tell you from having been now on the inside of both sides, a problem on both sides.

I really need to write that book I think ...

Perplexing

If your goal is to get the public to take science seriously, what difference does it make if the motives of some of the actors that help you accomplish this goal differ from yours? If your own motives are communitarian, making the world a better place, and theirs are individualistic, making themselves richer, so what? If working together nonetheless gets you farther towards this common goal than you'd otherwise get on your own, why should you refuse to collaborate?

(Note: I'm out West at a conference. I spent this afternoon on a university campus. Time for short reflections only but two things are eminently clear: 1. I'm glad I no longer work at a university, and 2. Far too many academics are well-meaning and thoughtful people, but they are out of touch with reality when it comes to what is required to get things done in the public sphere. More to come ... )

When they start to recognize you're not totally full of crap ...

After some of my whinier posts recently, I figured I should let readers know that I actually do like it here at the Petting Zoo. A lot of us post-acs, especially in English, get frustrated when the nonacademic world questions or doesn't recognize our madmadwordsmithing skillz acquired through so many long years of bad romance with that sick and twisted lover academe calls "Language and Literature Studies."

Let it be known, however, that my fellow Petting Zoo critters are beginning to realize how nice it is having an Almost English Professor at their beck and call -- especially one that once listed "animal studies" on her CV as a research interest. (Seriously, I shit you not! Could you not tell from all the recent animal metaphors and earlier animal posts?)

Here are three things I did in the last day or so that validate my existence here, at least for the time being:

• Started -- and then settled -- a kerfluffle over when to use the adjectival vs. the atrributive noun form of a certain word. The result was a change to the title of the Flaming Kangaroo Gas event title on our website and in the program and all the promotional materials. In other words, I used my knowledge of the English language to make my fellow critters look smart rather than stupid or pretentious.
• Drafted the speech that Expanding Habitats' Big Dolphin is giving at the Flaming Kangaroo Gas event. FKG has both public and behind-closed-door components, and the speech is sort of a big deal because it introduces the public part and must accomplish several goals in only about 600 words: introduce Expanding Habitats to the public, introduce Big Dolphin as EH's leader, introduce the event itself, introduce the keynote speaker (who is a former member of Congress), and please the EH major donor (as in seven-figure donor) who is sponsoring the event. That's a lot! And it was only after acomplishing a series of smaller, totally insignificant writing tasks that -- presto! change-o! -- suddenly, recent Ph.D. (go figure!) is the go-to person when other critters  want something written well and written quickly.
• Worked with a colleague -- we'll call hir Enviro Shark -- on hir PowerPoints for an upcoming presentation and had some input, from a humanities perspective, that ze hadn't thought of.

What's especially awesome is that Enviro Shark's presentation is at an upcoming conference we're both going to. It's interdisciplinary, and I would have submitted a paper proposal myself had I not started here months after the deadline had passed. The fact that they're letting me go anyway -- basically to schmooze, promote Expanding Habitats, and support Enviro Shark -- totally vindicates my choice to blow off that other conference I almost paid my own way for a few months back. It'll be fun to go to a conference without the pressure of either presenting or being on the academic job market. And it'll be especially fun to have the chance to bond a little with Enviro Shark.

Enviro Shark is a recent Ph.D., too, in environmental engineering. Ze is a type 1 leaver who only finished hir dissertation because ze couldn't stand the thought of not finishing. Ze immediately got out without ever going on the academic job market. Ze also got hir job here as a research analyst around the same time I started the secretary gig, which maybe tells you something about the relative ease with which science people and humanities people make their escapes.

Anyway, Enviro Shark is part of the Survival in Captivity crew and no doubt felt some of the sense of dislocation and irritation when Expanding Habitats took over, but ze hasn't been here all that long and seems to be adapting rather well -- not as hot and bothered as Senior Pink Elephant (who has been keeping, mercifuly, out of my way).

 So ... yes, it's been a good week, and the conference, too, which I leave for Thursday morning, will be good, too ...