On
Writing
Compiled by Sohail Moughal
15 December 2005
I
like to write so why not write on writing today and put it in writing. If I
write, "fgrgg htryr wehehrurtu, hfhfhf, ttt". Can you call it writing.
I guess not, really. Which means, a writing has to be meanigful to be called
a writing. A writing can be good or bad or totally nonsense or creative or can
have multiple qualities. The need to write emerges from the fact that human
lives have become complex over the centuries and the power of memory is no more
a significant or a dependable method of recording and presenting transactions
in a permanent form.
Today we can not imagine a world without writing. Where or by whom the first
writings were done is not known, but many believe that initial form of writing
emerged around 6000 BC not as a visible recording of a language, but in the
shape of symbols or pictures to deliver or explain something. We can not call
pictures drawn in the caves as writings as they did not represent a language.
It was around the 26th century BC when
writing started representing syllables of a language spoken by
the Sumerians
in what is Southern Iraq today.
The oldest-known forms of writing were primarily logographic in nature, based
on pictographic and ideographic elements. Today with so many variations in a
writing system its hard to classify the writing systems of the world uniquely.
A generally acceptable classification is given below:
| Type
of writing system |
What
each symbol represents |
Example
|
| Logographic |
morpheme |
Chinese hanzi
|
| Syllabic |
syllable |
Japanese kana
|
| Alphabetic |
phoneme (consonant
or vowel) |
Latin |
| Abugida |
phoneme (consonant+vowel) |
Indian devanagari
|
| Abjad |
phoneme (consonant) |
Arabic |
Featural
|
phonetic feature |
Korean hangul
|
The
infinite monkey theorem states that if you put an infinite number of monkeys at
typewriters for an infinite period of time, then eventually one monkey might end
up typing Shakespeares "Hemlet". According to mathematics it is probable,
but it might take a day or it might take a zillion years. So far we know, at this
point in time, the only confirmed and meanigful writing in existence is of human
origin. Some humans can create a writing more meanigful than others. The earliest
form of writing was mostly of technical nature and consisted of accounting records,
administrative texts and historical accounts. Later as the languages evolved writing
was used for maintaining academic and religious records. Somewhere in time a need
emerged to write about dreams, emotions, imaginations, new concepts, ideas, experiences,
and fantasies and thus the concept of creative writing evolved. Creativity is
fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight. Some even mixed
professional or technical writing with creative or artistic writing.
We
have surely lost count of how much has been written. Library of Congress has 18
million books. University of California made an attempt to figure up the worldwide
number of original book titles that have been published, both in and out of print
and their result was
65 million book titles. Many old books have been lost completely. Should an ancient
Roman scroll containing the only known work of a forgotten author be regarded
a published book? Or a unique hand-written medieval codex be counted or not? Today
writing has many genres and forms like descriptive, expository, narrative, persuasive,
poetic and technical etc. With so much written already since the 6000 BC, there
is still room for more and sometimes older concepts are rewritten with more creativity
or with a unique style. Creativity
is now required in almost everything we do, let alone our writings, and can be
assessed on several dimensions:
- Intellectual leadership. Creative thinkers are able
to create new and promising theories or exciting trends which inspire others to
follow up; in essence starting a movement, school of thought or trend.
- Sensitivity to problems. Being able to identify problems that
challenge others and open up a new field of thought is a mark of creative thinking.
- Originality. Creative thinkers are able to find ideas or solutions
with which no one else has been able to come up. Patents are (supposedly) given
out only to original ideas.
- Ingenuity. Ingenious solutions are able to solve problems in
a neat and surprising way or which also reflect a new perspective at looking at
the problem.
- Unusualness. Creative thinkers are able to see the remote associations
between ideas. When word association tests are given, people in highly creative
literary fields like poets give a higher proportion of unique responses.
- Usefulness. Solutions or ideas that are also practical are
also considered more creative as the creator is able to meet the constraints of
the problem while at the same time producing unusual and original solutions.
- Appropriateness. Non sequitur ideas can be highly original
and unusual, but are not as creative as ideas which are also appropriate to the
situation. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy is within the genre of fantasy
writing, but has also shown itself to be both convincing and imaginative.
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