On writing

Oh, great. It’s going to snow. Must be the Gem weekend.

Last year we got hit on the Saturday morning. It wasn’t terrible, and most folks managed to get there roughly on time, but it was still a pain. At present the forecast is snow beginning Friday afternoon and over by Saturday morning, which may not present terrible problems. But who knows? And what can you do? It is a city tournament, and a university at that, so there’s little question that it will happen. But do we lose rounds or something? Only time will tell. And I figure, let’s wait at least until tomorrow before everybody panics.

Last night we met at the school, which I had been sort of shying away from because they’ve been locking it up tighter than some really tightly locked up thing, out of the current fear of craziness. Whatever. But I needed a board to write on, plus the chez is undergoing renovations and is in serious disarray, the worst part of which is that Tik (pronounced teek) is locked up all day (really tightly) and when he’s finally released he’s about ten times more feral than usual. It’s bad enough that he considers debaters to be nothing more than overlarge mice on a normal day. Stoke his furnace, and the blood will flow like some really bloody flowing thingie.

Today is a day off from metaphors.

Anyhow, I tried to deconstruct case-writing (again). Students get some gobbledygook idea of essay writing in class, which I guess suffices a little, but I’ve been working with writers of one stripe or another for a bazillion years now, and I think it’s a little different than that. Actually, it’s a little different for each writer. Some do things this way, some do things that way. One size does not fit all. And even before you get to that point, there’s the question of natural ability. I am of the belief that, for whatever reason, some people are just better writers than other people. They get it, so to speak, and they can do it without a lot of hidey-hay hidey-ho. As a corollary to this, some people are just not good writers, and no amount of hidey-hay hidey-ho will transform them. Good writers, with practice, become better good writers, while bad writers, with practice, become better bad writers. Crossing the bridge from one side to the other doesn’t happen often. I’ve been reading Ian Fleming lately, and he’s the perfect example of this. He’s pretty much a poor stylist although a good storyteller, and if you read his books in order you can clearly see a progression from loosely controlled hack to tightly controlled hack. He got better as he went along. He never got exactly good, but he did improve. Then do the same for Dickens. He was always good from the beginning, but the nature of Our Mutual Friend or Bleak House against even Copperfield? From a loosely controlled god to a tightly controlled god. The books are all the evidence you need.

So there are hack case writers and brilliant case writers, and I maintain that I can see if someone is a good writer from the first case they hand in as novices. They will only get better over time, but the student incapable of putting two words together to make a phrase will, over time, be able to make a phrase or two while the student whose writing naturally flows will be writing killer cases before you know it. The problem for me is, first, identifying which is which—easy enough—and then helping them along accordingly. It’s not hard to help the latter person: just read them closely and point out when they’re sloppy or they’ve missed something important. Helping the former is harder, because they don’t necessarily know what they don’t know, and their inherent inability to deal with words makes it difficult for them to understand what you’re saying to them since, of course, you’re using words, which they're not that good at.

I tried last night to explain the rather basic concept of having something to say. With no preparation whatsoever, given a core idea for a side in LD, you can develop a set of ideas around that core, and turn those ideas into arguments. That’s what I tried to show, and why I needed the board. It almost doesn’t matter what the core idea is, but until you have that idea, you can’t develop it. Everything flows from the core idea, which in LD is not the value or criterion but simply the thing you want to argue. Rehabilitation makes you into a better person, say. That leads to three or four very strong aff arguments, and if you’re paying attention, you’ve got a case. But the point is to demonstrate the process of how we get from rehab makes you a better person to better people improve safety to gov fulfills obs (now the crit) to fulfill V of F. You know what I mean.

For a lot of people, writing is a tortuous process. For others, it’s fun and easy as pie. (Hey. A metaphor! Oh, wait. It’s a cliché. Sorry about that.) My basic belief in writers versus non-writers sort of assumes that non-writers will always find it torturous and natural writers won’t, but that may not be true. Whichever, writing cases is a very specific writing chore, and it only happens successfully when the case is based on a clear premise that is ultimately elaborated into the structures that the case requires (LD being different from PF, in other words). I don’t know if I’m getting anything across to people, but last night at least they didn’t fall asleep and they seemed to be with me all the way. Maybe the mechanics of what I was doing will only take intuitively. I don’t know. But if I do nothing with my little team of nauticians over time, if I can somehow make them even marginally better writers, I’ll have accomplished something.