Weekend Talk | Limitations of Writing and Freedom of Spoken

In a private chat yesterday, I mentioned that I admire @jobgirlJennifer with the ability to "host a podcast by one person", because I often go off topic when I speak.

When working in the media, I especially envy those who can express their ideas easily. There are always a lot of concepts in my mind, but the verbal expression cannot keep up with the operation of the mind. Every time you want to make a proposal, you must write a verbatim script (although you can't read the script, but you must write it out) so that you won't perform unscripted. Writing has its limits but instead I need a certain range to restrain myself.

I can be a tough guy, even though my articles are almost always posted on a whim (including this one) without a strong theme plan or an outline of what the plan is to say, but I'm not very patient with other people's unplanned writing, is it an ego mentality? After reading it, I will think to myself: Is it necessary to write about this kind of thing that everyone knows?

In fact, I usually write about what everyone knows.

With an idea "words and dictation" in mind, I wrote Déjà vu - the influence of oral tales , interspersed with gypsies and troubadours, unable to explain why those things came to be. Some of the features mentioned in the article are a bit like a mind map in my mind, and the elements are branched out under that theme, that is, if I write about the same theme next time, I may grab other elements at random.

The author who read "Writing for the Mind" two weeks ago mentioned that she has the habit of writing every day. Even as a literature graduate student, the content she wrote in the first few years was very rubbish. The author regards writing as a practice, It is believed that the negative emotions accumulated in the heart will be expressed in writing. If the garbage in the heart has been more than five years, the first five years may reflect the writing in the heart.

And the author's neighbor read her notes on practice writing (which should have been private practice) and was moved: it turns out that the person who wrote "rubbish" in the past can finally become one who wrote "this" articles (at that time The author is already a bestselling author). This example is put forward in the book to express that writing practice can improve writing ability - almost every time I take a copywriting job, I will be asked by the client how to strengthen the writing. In fact, I am not sure whether it is more writing or more reading. ? I always say, "Writing is a skill, not a pen."

What the public thinks of good writing is also a question I often think about. In my opinion, it has something to say instead of writing gorgeous words, and the work of copywriting is almost not to write anything of value, to me it is a pile of words, all kinds of permutations and combinations.

Back to the unlimited written and oral stories the title says.

It's very interesting, we all heard oral stories when we were growing up, but that is different from the oral histories that were circulated before the development of words. Most of the stories we heard from elders or children's audio programs were written— For example, "Bible" stories, "Aesop's Fables", "Grimm's Fairy Tales", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms"..., instead of relying on the memory of generations when words were not popular.

I have no descendants and there seems to be no need to tell a story, but assuming it must be a childhood memory to tell an oral story.

My mother is a person who cares about the sense of ritual, and she has planted many memories in our growing up. We have afternoon tea on Wednesday, and we have a big meal at the end of the Sabbath on Saturday. The "Afternoon Tea on Wednesday" continued to my middle school, and the tradition of "Sabbath Dinner" is still occasionally carried out until now. Those little things make us There are some expectations in a boring life.

If I have descendants, this family tradition will surely be passed down, even though Marshall always insisted that "Sunday is Sunday."

In the beginning, on Wednesday afternoon tea day, tea brewed with black tea leaves was served in a teapot, and jam was added when drinking, which is the way of drinking black tea in Russia. Mom will definitely use the whole set of tea sets, put a few slices of home-baked shortbread on a small plate, and we will set the table together before the afternoon tea begins. Later, the habit of afternoon tea became more and more busy with my mother's work, so I changed it to a coffee shop near my house. There was no Russian black tea and coffee was replaced, so I probably started drinking coffee in the third or fourth grade of elementary school.

I remember watching Italian films in the 1960s. I was not allowed to drink coffee until I graduated from elementary school at the age of eleven. It was a symbol of adulthood.

Every time I relay these details, there will be a gap. Maybe I will add the color of the tablecloth I saw a few days ago in my memory. The jam that actually matches the Russian black tea is homemade or bought ready-made... It will be adjusted and revised when it is written. The story It becomes more logical but the written story is fixed and lacks freedom and imagination.

But after writing, people can explain their values more clearly, not limited to a single value expressed in oral stories, and start to add various ideas and refutations to traditions in books through writing. The first writer in the West mentioned in "Eternity in the Pages" was Aristotle, in that definition "words create a whole new consciousness and mentality", he has a huge collection of books, and he also escaped The tradition of heroism in Greek epics. If this is the benchmark, it should be said that the reason for the good writing is that you have the ability to think for yourself by reading a lot.

Finally, I want to insert a seemingly unrelated concept. In the past few weeks, I talked about the philosophy exam questions of the French high school exam. European middle school students all take philosophy classes, but the French philosophy exam is particularly interesting. It traces back to the Greek culture. , a tradition that combined oral history and writing, and they were particularly fascinated by people who were eloquent and good at debating, a specialty of the political leaders of the Greek city-states. Instead, the Romans believed that debate was empty talk and small talk. In contrast, in ancient China, there were literati who read the scriptures and only copied for the king, which is the formation of a completely different political culture.

Attached is an old article of mine " The Origin of the French National Debate"

Written Restrictions and Oral Freedom