A Writer's Perspective

When browsing the articles from Writers on Writing, I was instantly drawn to Joyce Carol Oates. My second semester of college I took an Interpersonal Communication course where Oates' novel, We Were the Mulvaneys, was required reading. I loved it when I first read it and it is still one of my favorite novels to this day. I was pleasantly surprised when Oates' perspective on writing was very similar to my own. In her Writers on Writing piece, 'To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet,' Oates says, "I've never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but as the attempted embodiment of a vision..." (Oates, 1999, para. 25). I completely agree with this because when I write, I don't do it just for the sake of writing. I do it because I want to write down a great idea that I've seen in my head, preserve a memory, or relive a dream.

Oates believes that writing and running (or being in motion in general) go hand in hand. She discusses Henry David Thoreau's need "to spend more than four hours out of doors daily, in motion" (para. 7), Charles Dickens' "compulsion to walk and walk and walk in the darkness and pattering rain" (para. 8), and Henry James' "[love] to walk for miles in London" (para. 9). For Oates, walking and running allows her to visualize an idea for a novel. Before she puts any ink to paper, she has run for miles visualizing the setting, the characters and the story. "Running seems to allow me, ideally, an expanded consciousness in which I can envision what I'm writing as a film or a dream...By the time I come to type out my writing formally, I've envisioned it repeatedly" (para. 24-25). Running is a way for writers to "unsnarl" the the tangles of an envisioned story, and keeps the writer sane (or as sane as a writer can be, Oates decides).

Oates also says that writing is a process of "continuous revision." Whenever she writes a new chapter in a book, she rereads through everything she has written before. When she writes the final few chapters in a book, she rereads the beginning chapters to make sure that they are uniform. "On days when I don't run, I don't feel 'myself'...and the writing remains snarled in endless revisions" (Oates, 1999, para. 5). I feel the same way on days when I'm trying to write a paper or a story. I feel claustrophobic sitting inside and trying to pound out pages of text, but a quick walk on the Erie Canal or a trip to the park with my Golden Retriever completely clears my mind and allows all of my thoughts to untangle. If anything I've written this semester has seemed coherent it is because I spent most of my time outside thinking about what I was going to write rather than actually sitting at a desk and writing it. Some people think of that as procrastination, but to me it makes all the difference. "Both running and writing are highly addictive activities; both are, for me, inextricably bound up with consciousness. I can't recall a time when I wasn't running, and I can't recall a time when I wasn't writing," and I believe many writers, including myself, feel the same (Oates, 1999, para. 14).

Throughout this course my idea of a writer's perspective in the social media environment has definitely changed. I had never really thought twice about the things I posted on social media until this course. I had never posted things that would hurt others or that I would be ashamed of certain people seeing, but I also wasn't actively vetting the information I was sharing with others. Social media allows the instantaneous flow of information, so it is imperative that everything we create or share through these outlets is as accurate as possible. This helps build your credibility which is extremely important in the new media environment where anyone can post anything no matter how accurate it may be. At the same time, though, social media is a great platform for writers to network and gain a following. Twitter, Facebook and even Tumblr allows for writers to get potential readers excited about what they have in store for them without shoving their work down their audience's throat (Petronzio, 2012). If used effectively, social media can garner positive results for writers if they choose to partake in it.

Resources

Oates, J.C. (1999, July 18). To invigorate literary mind, start moving literary feet. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/071999oates-writing.html

Petronzio, M. (2012, February 2). 10 pro tips for writers using social media. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/02/02/social-media-writers/