Religious Foundation

Writing Forms

I am a writing assistant at my small liberal arts college. I'll admit I'm not 100% clear on the official details of my job, but in my opinion, I'm supposed to engage in dialectic with other students with the goal of increasing their confidence in their essays. And through this dialectic, I'm beginning to realize that there is a philosophical tool which can be used to improve almost any writing process, but which for some reason is rarely taken advantage of. Now I will talk about the utility of adapting yourself to the form of your idea.

The ethos of writing I was brought up with is that I am to write to express myself. There is some idea that I have and I write to express it. What I hope to dispell is the phrase "that I have." What it really should say is, "There is some idea and I write to express it." By detaching my self from the idea, I become more capable of interacting with the form of the idea as it is. The ethos of writing I believe in is that I write to express whichever idea I've chosen.