Writing is one of the most common skills used on a day to day basis. Writing comes with a purpose, to whom are you writing for? Why are you writing this? And so on. When you sit down with a pen and paper to begin writing you automatically set your mind to answer those few questions. Whether it’s writing for a creative purpose, writing to a colleague at work, writing to your boss and so forth. You can’t just write in general with no purpose. This is what Elizabeth Wardle the author of, “You can learn to write in general” argues about. This bad idea of being able to write in general creates an illusion that just any writing would fit any genre or any purpose, when truly that is not the case.
Writing in general is a difficult task to complete when you have no moral purpose for why you are writing. For example, if an author were to sit down and start talking about how college is a waste of time, the author must have an audience he/she is writing to.They can’t just sit there and write in general about the topic. They must have an audience to whom they are trying to convey this idea to and some evidence to back up their claim. It’s not like fictional writing where the author can just make up the story as they go, they must have concrete facts, most importantly must have a purpose. Another example, waking up one morning and deciding to start a business. You can’t just do that. You need to know an audience to whom you are selling a product to, why are you selling this product?, what is this product and what’s so good about it?
You must have some money already before making a business to be able to start the company, create the product you are promoting to sell, promote the product so people hear about it. Therefore, you can’t just start something with no purpose or audience, the same goes for writing in general.
Elizabeth Wardle, author of “You can learn to write in general”, suggests that “a better conception of writing is one in which we all remember (realistically) our own experiences learning to write in different situations”. (Wardle, 31). This gives the writer the flexibility to write for different situations, such as different purposes and audiences. Not all writing would fit into the same genre or the same audience because each creates its own purpose.“You can’t do it, because it can’t be done. There is no such thing as writing in general. Writing is always in particular.”(Wardle pg ,30)
Writing in different situations is the key concept in writing. The writer must gather new techniques for each purpose of writing. The author of “Elon Statement on Writing Transfer” says, “Successful writing transfer occurs when a writer can transform rhetorical knowledge and rhetorical awareness into performance”. Implying that the writer must have some sort of knowledge into what they are trying to write. This helps the reader be able to understand the key purpose of what the writing was for. Each writing created has its own main key of focus. You must be able to gain new ideas and techniques in order to be successful in new situations of writing. One can not expect that the same technique used before would be stable for another situation. Example, I can not write an essay for math and expect the same technique I used to score me a hundred in English. Another example could be, in a historic writing you use evidence from what happened in the time frame but in fiction since it’s made up you may not need any evidence, it wouldn’t be as crucial.
Lastly, it is most important to remember that writing does have a purpose. For whatever purpose the author is writing, they do not just write in “general”. As a writer one must recall what the purpose for their writing is and to whom they are writing to. Each writing must portray its own meaning, not all writing can be used for the same concept, genre etc. You can always grow from the previous writings but it can not be the same. Therefore, you can not learn to write in general, but you can learn to write with a purpose and audience.
Work Cited:
– Ball, E. Cheryl; Loewe, M. Drew. Bad Ideas About Writing. Wardle, Elizabeth. “You can learn to write in general”.Pp.30-33.
-Elon University.”Elon’s statement on Writing Transfer”.Incorporated,2013.Pp 1-9. http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/academics/teaching/ers/writing_transfer/Elon-Statement-Writing-Transfer.pdf