Weekly Blog Post 1

"Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself."
--Truman Capote

This quote stood out to me because of how true it is. Obviously, writing has certain rules and regulations, and for the most part, a writer is expected to follow those rules. However, that doesn't mean that a writer doesn't have any freedom to be creative. There's room to bend the rules a bit in order to fit the individual style of the writer and better serve the purpose of the writing.

If the purpose is to write a research report or an expository paper for a class, then the writer is going to have to follow the basic writing rules of grammar and organization, as well as any other directions from the instructor. This is necessary for many reasons: to keep the writing professional, to make the writing clear and understandable in an academic setting, and to get a good grade.

But if the purpose is to write a story or something more informal, there's a lot more room to play around with the rules. The story might be organized differently, or told from a different perspective. A story might be more effective if written in a first-person account, and many stories are written this way even though when learning to write, we are often taught not to use "I" in papers.

Grammar is another rule that can be bent by writers. Generally, correct grammar is necessary for writing to be considered "good," but again, this depends on the purpose of the writing. Take Mark Twain's novels. Huck Finn, being an uneducated boy from the South, wouldn't have spoken perfect, proper, grammatically correct English and so Twain didn't write him that way. The story is still there, still understandable, still relatable, and probably even more so for the conversational language and style used.

Going back to Capote's quote, he says that if you don't know the rules, learn them before rearranging them. The basic rules are important to learn because a good writer needs to first know how to write before being able to experiment and try different things. It's like learning how to walk before learning how to run.