Monthly Archive for April, 2009

Page 2 of 2

Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school

Published by davinci on April 11, 2009 in autobiography, open notebook science and personal. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Being editor-in-chief of my high school’s literary magazine allowed me to get away at home with writing a lot more than was actually published in it. At that time, other than fiction, I wrote mostly about science and technology, and especially about their effects on culture. I hadn’t really analysed why at the time, but in retrospect what must have been my subconscious motivations have become a little bit more clear to me.

I am a member of the first generation in which the masses have easy access to the tools for creating mass media. When you think about it, it’s incredible how much has changed even in just one decade. At that time, if you wanted to disseminate your message on a shoestring budget, you’d type or print your pamphlet, bring it to the printshop or photocopier, make however many copies, and physically distribute them. (And if your audience was really illiterate, you’d speak into a cassette recorder and give out copies of the tape.) People with kooky or dangerous ideas were thus limited in the reach of their message or the amount of damage they could do.

But with the advent of the mass popularisation of the Internet, the dynamics have suddenly changed. Now anyone can easily broadcast any message whatsoever and have the potential to reach the entire world… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 3: science writing in high school
  2. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 4: high school and being editor-in-chief
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 2: elementary school, ESL, and fiction
  4. An essay on open notebook science
  5. Open notebook science
1 Comment

Overcoming my writer’s block, part 4: high school and being editor-in-chief

Published by davinci on April 10, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

In the previous post, I wrote about the main cause of my writer’s block, as far as scientific writing was concerned. But that was not the end of it — my parents continued to punish me for writing even as I switched to other topics.

Now, being beaten, locked out of the house, and threatened with disownment would probably have deterred most people from continuing to do the things that provoked those reactions in the first place. But the maltreatment I received at home was more than balanced by the acclaim I received outside. Everyone called me a genius and told me that this or that one of my essays was the most insightful thing they had ever read on whatever subject it was on, that I was the most talented writer they had ever met, that I should be published, and so on. People kept telling me that I should submit my writings to this magazine or that journal, but I couldn’t heed their suggestions. I had conflicting goals: on the one hand, like any author, I wanted to disseminate my writings, but on the other, I had to limit the probability that my parents would chance upon them. And this latter constraint took priority, because being caught would have meant being prevented from writing at all… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 3: science writing in high school
  2. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 2: elementary school, ESL, and fiction
  4. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 1: overview
  5. How I managed to be so successful in high school
0 Comments

Overcoming my writer’s block, part 3: science writing in high school

Published by davinci on April 9, 2009 in academic writings, autobiography and personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

I have already written previously about how counterproductive authoritarian parenting is, but this is a fact that I simply cannot emphasise enough. Educators are always talking about the importance of encouraging children to read and write, but my parents have always discouraged me from both. Maybe this sounds unbelievable, but I think it is quite common among parents from certain cultural backgrounds. My parents dismissed anything that I read or wrote outside of what was required for school or a job or some other official purpose as “frivolous” and a “waste of time”.

My parents had mostly ignored my writings in elementary school, but I think this was because they had assumed that everything I wrote was “for school”. My father would occasionally pick up something I had written; he would frown or glare at me, or make some negative remarks, but at that time he did not order or pressure me to stop. I think his comments at the time were mostly directed at the school system for what he perceived to be a waste of my time for requiring me to write essays on topics he considered unimportant — or, even worse, fictional stories… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school
  2. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 4: high school and being editor-in-chief
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 2: elementary school, ESL, and fiction
  4. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 1: overview
  5. How I managed to be so successful in high school
0 Comments

Overcoming my writer’s block, part 2: elementary school, ESL, and fiction

Published by davinci on April 8, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

When I first arrived in Canada at the age of eight, I had to take an ESL class at school. Because there were so few students in the class, the ESL instructor acted essentially as a private tutor to each of us in turn. Ironically, because I was given so many more reading and writing assignments than my Canadian-born classmates, my facility with English soon overtook theirs. Within a year, my writing was so good that my teacher told my grandparents at the parent-teacher interview that I should be published. When I explained this to my grandmother, who didn’t speak English herself, she was very pleased; but she never acted on it, nor would my grandparents have known how. But imagine — a year ago I was obliged to take an ESL class, and now I had become so skilled that my teacher thought I should be a professional author! It was an enormous boost to my confidence and a huge incentive to keep on writing.

I think there were two factors that made my writings so popular with my teachers and classmates… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 3: science writing in high school
  2. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 4: high school and being editor-in-chief
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school
  4. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 1: overview
  5. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 6: communications technologies and their effects on global politics
0 Comments

Overcoming my writer’s block, part 1: overview

Published by davinci on April 7, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I have again been unable to write for a long time. The task that I had set before myself, of writing an autobiography from birth up to the present to explicate the causes of my depression, was just too big. After writing several large chunks and attempting to arrange the pieces in some sensible order, I finally had to put everything aside — temporarily — out of frustration.

I have returned to the project with the aim of proceeding in smaller steps, by dividing up my writing into themes. The first theme that I will tackle is the problem of my writer’s block, which I have already mentioned. It might seem strange and self-contradictory that I should be writing about having a writer’s block — but the fact is that I have been unable to write anything else. I am therefore going to confront this writer’s block directly by forcing myself to write whatever I have to about it.

I used to be a very prolific writer… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 3: science writing in high school
  2. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 4: high school and being editor-in-chief
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 2: elementary school, ESL, and fiction
  4. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 6: communications technologies and their effects on global politics
  5. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school
0 Comments