Help writing a CV
November 27th, 2007 by
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Help writing a CV: If, on the other hand, you really seek excellence, if you seek to write things that others might actually want to read, you need to stop playing it safe: go for it, take the plunge, jump over the edge. You won’t know where you are going. You will write much that is terrible. It will feel like a much longer path to tread than if you just want to get rid of badness. But you will get rewards. You will get lots of feedback and it will be interesting. People will hate some of what you write and love other parts; some people will love what others hate. If you can put up with all these things, especially the inevitable flops, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that something is happening in your writing and that you are on your way to more than mere non-offensiveness.
Help writing a CV: And in the end it won’t be a longer path. Getting rid of badness is an infinite and impossible task. There will always be bits of badness in your writing, lurking here and there for some sharpeyed reader to find, no matter how hard you try to remove them. Whereas if you go all out for excellence and don’t worry about that bad writing that comes with it, before long you will be able to produce some writing that people will really want to read — even to buy.
Help writing a CV: Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn. Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one. . . .
Help writing a CV: "Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. " I’ve been talking so much about self, self, self in the articles on voice. What if that’s all wrong: incorrect; immoral. I don’t think it is, but since what I am seeking in this article of the blog is a central mystery-life or power or magic in words — there is probably more than one path to it. I pursue now another approach, another line of attack, a different set of terms. Writing is hard, mysterious work. Of course. That’s what this book is all about. But if we stop shaking our finger at the writer for a moment and stress instead what a hard and mysterious job the reader has, we will end up learning something important about writing.
Help writing a CV: To get meaning out of a set of words, a reader must build meaning in. When you come to a word you don’t know in your reading, you may have to look it up in the dictionary and then try out the different definitions to see which one is intended here. This is much more work than you usually have to do when you read, but it serves to illustrate a basic fact about reading: for everything you read, you must bring meanings to the words, not take meanings from them. Meanings are in readers, not in words. When the page says chat, English readers bring thoughts of a cozy conversation; French readers bring thoughts about cats. Readers build meanings; words just sit there.
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