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PT Wilx's avatar

As a writer who has worked the full range of jobs from academia to marketing, I would just add one point in addition to all the above. "Good writing" and "clear prose" are very often neither good nor clear; they may in fact be deliberately obscurantist. I know this from personal experience, because I am paid to write such sentences. When we say writing feels "good," I believe what we often mean is that it seduces us effectively into joining the narrative that the writer is creating. We nod along. We see the point. We skate past the cracks in the argument and forgive the generalizations. Whereas when I read, for instance, Judith Butler, or even some of the more challenging parts of the Dolly essay, I'm not being seduced. I'm not being asked to nod along. I'm encountering a writer with very clear ideas, who is challenging me to slow down and wrestle with those ideas and consider their implications for my own thinking. This is not good writing, it's great writing. And yes, okay, even there, maybe I'm being a little seduced! But only enough to get me to say, Okay, you got me--this is worth thinking about. This is worth doing the work. Whereas, at the other end of the spectrum, people who lash out on Twitter over some secure instance of over-complicated writing, are not looking to do the work. They're looking for just the opposite--a circle jerk of reassurance that they don't ever need to do the work, that they shouldn't be asked to do the work, that those who would ask it of them are laughable, ridiculous, and should probably be driven out of their underpaid university positions.

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Ivana A.'s avatar

I am feeling this so much right now. Currently in grad school and working on my thesis and I cannot tell you how often I wondered/suspected that the “lack of clarity” in my writing was viewed as such because no one wanted to go on my journey when they were willing to go on other's. I know that I don’t always write clearly, and I am working on it, but does that always have to do with the fact that “English is not my first language”, as many love to point out? Can I have some space for learning the rigor of the topic, not just work on my assimilation? It seems that only some are given space of developing ideas, where my journey was often marked with a ball and chain of my circumstances. Somehow, it is never a positive. I tend to eventually turn in an essay or a research paper with high marks, and even a compliment, but no one has ever thought to credit my experience as a refugee and someone thinking in two languages. My experience with this essay is very specific, I realize, but it is literally putting words to thoughts that I had about myself and I just feel a bit less crazy this morning. Thank you!

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