The inspiration for this essay is somewhat sensitive material, so I'll have to be circumspect--fortunately I am all-too-comfortable with abstraction: if you write without passion, without at least a strong sense of purpose (beyond a deadline, in this case one past), your readers will likely be bored. It will be clear that you do not care much, and so why should they? That same passion essential to lively writing, however, can cloud your judgment in myriad ways and doom your work to mediocrity--inadequately-supported arguments (it seems obvious to you), glossed-over weaknesses, snarky comments that alienate the unconvinced and repel those who expect fairness to all sides.
There is a reason passion is often linked to the metaphor of fire.
The best way I have found to modulate my biases effectively, is to imagine a reader who is basically like me, but for one basic difference: all of his life experiences make his intuition or gut lean the other way. I think people are naturally selfish, this person had an early indelible encounter with someone winsome who convinced him that at worst we live in a tension between our natural altruism and the desire for personal gratification. Things have generally worked out well for me, while this person has known innumerable unjust encounters with chance and his fellow human beings.
To be clear, I do not think in these biographical terms; whatever I am arguing, I imagine a person who sees some of my self-evident or probable premises and doubts every one of them. In brief, this gives me a fairly reliable Muse, even if she is something of a taunt. Who do you imagine when you write history?
No comments:
Post a Comment