Now that you have mastered the skill of reading, it is time for you
  to take up writing. For there would be no readers if writers did
  not write things for them to read. On the other hand, there can be
  writers without readers. For example, much writing is spoken by
  actors and listened to by listeners, rather than being read by
  readers. This is called "television". In any case, to spend one's
  entire life reading and listening, without contributing to the
  body of that which can be read or listened to, is the height of
  selfishness. Therefore, you must write.

  First, be certain that you have the proper writing equipment.
  There are two kinds of writers, those who write with pencil and
  those who write with pen. As you are a beginning writer, you may
  wish to use pencil. Modern pencils come with erasers that can be
  used to correct mistakes, and even well-trained beginners make
  mistakes. As you gain practice in writing, you will become an
  advanced writer; then you may use a pen.  Advanced writers do not
  make mistakes.

  I do not recommend the use of a typewriter or a computer for
  writing. These devices are very good at printing, but we are
  concerned with writing here. Printing is for small children.

  Once you have acquired a good quality pencil, you are ready to
  begin your writing career. And now I must caution you about one of
  the worst mistakes a beginning writer can make, and that is to
  write alone. If you do this, you will never master the art of
  writing. Instead, you should write as part of a group and learn
  writing skills from the experienced members of the group. Find a
  good writing committee and join it.

  Yes, the best way to learn writing is to be part of a writing
  committee. Thanks to television, there are many writing committees
  available. This is because every sitcom is written by a committee,
  and there are many, many sitcoms. Vacancies open up on these
  committees quite frequently, as writers leave one committee to join
  another. Quite often a new sitcom will come into existence,
  requiring a whole new committee. Thus there are many good
  opportunities for the beginning writer to join a committee and
  learn the art of writing. With luck, you can join a committee for
  one of the better sitcoms, such as "Married with Children," "X
  Files," or "Ann Arbor School Board."

  Writing committees are organized in such a way as to guarantee the
  finest quality writing. Generally, there will be a committee member
  responsible for writing each part of speech. Thus, one member will
  write the nouns, another the verbs, another the adjectives, and so
  on and so forth. As a beginner, you will most likely start out as
  the gerund person--you will be apprenticed to the verb writer, who
  will give you verbs to turn into gerunds.  You do this by adding
  "ing" to the end of each verb. This is a simple yet important and
  rewarding task. It may come to seem repetitive after a while, but
  by then you should be ready for promotion to a higher position on
  the committee, and in the meantime, writing gerunds provides
  excellent penmanship practice. It is certainly preferable to what
  is considered the lowliest position on the committee, which is to
  do the punctuation. The punctuation job is usually given only to
  people with spelling deficiencies and seldom leads to promotion.

  The most important position on any writing committee is that of
  Head Writer. This is a person who has achieved mastery in all
  aspects of the art of writing, usually through years of experience
  doing the other committee chores. It is the job of the Head Writer
  to do the word order--to write the words and punctuation provided
  by the other committee members into proper sequence, so as to form
  sentences and paragraphs. Thus, the Head Writer assembles the final
  writing product that the reader reads or the listener hears. Every
  beginning writer aspires to be a Head Writer some day. With hard
  work and perseverance, you too can become a Head Writer!

  I will close by noting that there are a few exceptional individuals
  who can do all the tasks of writing by themselves, without the need
  of a committee. Such writers are called Bards. The greatest of
  these was Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, who wrote "Hamlet," which
  contains the immortal phrase "To be or not to be." It is clear from
  this that Shakespeare was a master of word order. A lesser writer
  might, if lucky, have chosen the same words, but would have written
  them in the wrong order, such as "Not or be be to to."

  There are very few Bards. You are probably not one, for if you
  were, you would be off somewhere writing classics instead of
  reading this. Thus, you should go and join a writing committee as
  soon as possible. Best of luck with your new writing career!

31 responses total.

ing ing ing ing ing
ing

is funny very this

Uh huh :} Committtees will get you everytime. I started with a pencil
thogh. Once I discovered the wonder of ancient IBM's that died. 
<smile> Can I be a bard too? That sounds so nice.

        I do not claim bard to be a, but I started with a computer, so,
        according to this device I do not deserve to be a writer... But I
        promis to switch to the slower method of the pen as soon as possible.

catchy!

        Is that Arrow  and the the greater than sign an Emoticon?  (I ask out
of almost total ignorance.)

Where do you see the Arrow and the > in this item, Shawn? The only
emoticon I saw was a :}.

        I've seen it several times, and it seems to be peculiar to Grex.
 .

Draw one for us.

Where are all the writers ?

I don't know about the writers, but there are a lot of *critics* here.
Try writing something....

Maybe all the writers are out writing and are too busy to post...
 <shrug>

 <grin>

I'm a writer and I'm here...
<abchan alt-tabs back to her novel>
The joys of multi-tasking :)

        Critics, and not ashamed off it!:)

I hope that you have all found good writing committees!

Ok, I'm done writing now.  What was the qusetion, please?

There were no questions. Why should I ask questions when I already
know all the answers?

        Fnord.

Would you care to share your answers with the class, John?

Heavens, that would be unprofessional! As a teacher, I can only
ask questions whose answers I already know, but I am not allowed
under any circumstances to reveal what the answers are.

        Fnord.

Hmph.
As a professional student, my credo is to answer questions in such 
a manner as to not only circumvent the actual answer, but to throw
the thread of discussion so far off the original topic that it 
pushes the assigned due date back several days. I'll bet you
have an answer for *that*.

Hey, no problem. If the due date gets pushed back several days,
that means I don't have to worry about grading 'em for a few more
days either. Everybody wins.

I have examined both the reading lesson and the writing lesson, but before
I get started, I have a question for the Professor.  Which should I learn
first, Reading or Writing?  Are both necessary?

No, of course not!  Learning through osmosis is much
more effective, not to mention eco-friendly.

I beg to agree. Neither is necessary, both may be harmful, but as
we all know, they are both inevitable.

As to the order of learning, most people learn reading first, then
writing. That is not a bad plan. But it would be a mistake to think
that this is the only possible order. After all, consider that the
first writer could not have been a reader, since there was nothing
for him or her to read.

Nature...speech came before writing, and names were given to natural
objects. In a sense, the objects were being read - you see the object, and
say its name - that's reading. Pictures of objects were also drawn - and
they were likewise read, and seemed to have carried meaning beyond simple
depiction - that's also reading. Therefore I think reading came before
alphanumeric writing. 

I should have said, iconographic writing...alphabets are a subset.

If you are talking about people speaking names with their voices,
then you are talking about what people do on the radio. If you are
talking about pictures, then you are talking about what television
is. I am talking about reading and writing, which is different from
both, although used by both.

I'm talking about how it started - long before radio. The first writing
was pictures (some writing still is pictures - ancient Egyptian and
modern Chinese). People *read* that writing. 

I am sorry, but television was not invented before radio.

It happens that it was.

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss