On Writing

Note to audience: I am currently tipsy --> finished off about 400ml of a bottle of wine after writing a material science report.

For the past 4 days, I have been working on preparing a report for one of my classes which is a study of fracture mechanics from the perspective of grain boundary engineering of bulk materials. What this means is that all sorts of materials are made of little itty-bitty crystals mashed together to form a big chunk of material. Metals and ceramics fall in to this category. Stuff like wood, might not and that knowing how these crystals mesh together can determing how strong a material is.

I have been attending classes for the last 3 months in Japanese and I did not grasp much of the course unless I was drawing from a pool of previously learned knowledge from my material science course back at UBC. It was not until I started pouring over a review paper provided by my professor, which I had to write a report on as my final exam, that I would finally understand the fragments and the bits and pieces of information that I would learn over the year would crystallize in my mind (excuse the pun).

It took 2 days of pouring over a 9 page document (while falling asleep several times) then dashing over vast knowledge-scape of the internet over another day that I would finally understand the paper. After that I would spend 2 days putting my thoughts together in order to produce a 1,500 word essay on how manipulating how crystals meshed together would improve the strength of bulk material (ie a chunk of material made up of itty-bitty crystals). I asked the professor for some slack to allow me to write this report in English as I do not have the grasp of the Japanese language to write a Japanese technical document.

What I did learn over the week of preparing for this report was that it becomes infinitely easier to write about a topic that you grasp and have a point to make of it. Without understanding and a point to write about, making a report or writing an essay of any sort is *impossible.* It took days to finally understand what was going on and it took atleast a day of some random writing to realize what points I wanted to make (I did a very bad thing, in that I didn't write an outline of the points of what I wanted to say at first to save me the trouble... as I usually do, for formal situations).

There is a reason I am writing about this. I remember a time when I was in middle school (when those existed in BC before turning into a grade 8~12 high school system) that I hated writing, like most other students out there. Writing was a chore-- it took a considerable amount of time to write a short essay on something trivial (ie. something I didn't think important) and then get a sucky grade on it. There were some years where my essays would be hits and I'd get a good mark in history and/or English, but there where other times where they would be misses. I even had an English teacher come up to me and ask me why my marks in Grade 12 dropped compared to grade 11... I had to write the damn English proficiency exam at the end of the year (I forgot the name) to get into an English course for my first year at university. As an aside, I got my butt whooped on the grammatical section but scored the mark in the essay section to have all other sections of the exam waived and have me eligible for the first year English course (Engl 112, as I remember exactly).

Back then in High School and some parts of university life, I hated writing (much like everyone else at the time). Writing, is immensely hard and different compared to speaking, because when it comes to writing, you as the author become vulnerable to your readers. Unlike speaking, your words do not transiently disappear into the abyss, nor can you support your arguments to understanding people with statements like "well... you know," or "you get the idea." It is different because what you say persists and you say is open to close scrutiny to other people. No more are semi-vague statements acceptable, nor are fallous or frivolous statements welcomed. Everything that you need to say, needs to be thought out and organized in ordered for you to make a point. Writing is a very naked and revealing act.

I have a profound respect for good writers. Most ideas begin with a feeling, a sort of hunch or a twitch of the mind. But for many people, these sensations remain as feelings that something clear yet fuzzy and thoughts are often left in that state. Many people become afraid of writing because they are afraid of "looking silly" or some sort of argument like that. At first is kind of embarrassing, but like a baby learning to speak, mistakes are necessary and it takes practice to get better.

There are more profound benefits than to just being a good writer, in that I mean a person that is able to put thoughts into words in an understandable manner. It is also the ability to be articulate or detailed about one's own discussions, for we all know that the devils are always in the details. To be able to write well, it take s a good understanding of what one wants to say, then to find the right words to say it. It doesn't end there, but it also requires good organization to present ideas in understandable ways-- not only must you understand how you might understand something, you must also understand how others think to present things in an understandable manner.

To have some sense of writing, it becomes important to know what you want to say. To know what you want to say, you must understand it and the basis of knowledge that you draw from. Without this start, it becomes a perilous journey to produce any sort of coherent writing. From the students I have taught, some of them believed that if they randomly started putting ideas together that an essay would appear in front of them. I used to be one of those people, I paid for it dearly from time to time when I wrote essays that were a hodge-podge of roaming points (my high school writing philosophy was to write some random body first, then make an introduction and conclusion to fit whatever I patched together :P). Sometimes it would be a hit and others would be a miss, but I always wrote best when I was pissed-- because when I was pissed, I always knew exactly why.

All of my meandering tangents aside, being able to explain things clearly, especially in writing, is telling of how well a person is able to think and understand information. Being able to explain something with ease is in reality, much harder than it looks (and most often, underestimated). For that, people that can explain complicated topics with depth and simplicity are well respected... and that person could be you.