Age of Composition: Is Writing An Arduous Task?

Graham Greene, a well-known English writer as well as a literary critic once mentioned, “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write or compose can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation”. “You will have a story in there, or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word,” said Patricia MacLachlan, one of the bestselling American children’s authors. Both Greene and MacLachlan share a similarity in their quote that is – writing seems to be an enjoyable spiritual or holy soul journey which allows us to be expressive by shaping and organizing our vague thoughts and abstract feelings into concrete evidence of words.  

Especially for societies today, the rise of globalization flow and online media has helped to raise a new generation who write far more, and in more-diverse forms, than the predecessors did. As Grabill from Michigan State University Writing in Digital Environments Research Center explained, “In order to interact on the Web, you have to write.” By simply browsing through the most widely used social networking sites – Facebook, we are depicted with infinity number of posts, messages, comments and statuses to describe ones’ current locations, emotions, states, thinking and actions. It is witnessed that technologies are driving people to compose whatever they wish to convey with written words instead of speech to express their thoughts, feelings and even doings and Yancey, an English professor from Florida State University named the current period as “Age of Composition”, whereby writing and composing plays an extensive important role in ones’ lives.

However, according to surveys conducted in various universities throughout the nation, it is surprised to discover that many students find writing a difficult, boring and tiring job to be done. The question aroused is why people writing every day complain writing as an arduous task for them. Isn’t writing a pleasurable therapy or simply a flow of ideas and thoughts that one can write “word after word after word” as mentioned by Greene and MacLachlan? A study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2008 found that sixty percent of teenagers today did not consider text messaging and other forms of electronic communication to be real writing. This study highlighted one of the most significant reasons – that is people’s preconceived notions of associating writing with formal academic purposes only, which most of them are inferior and less competent in.

Definitely, writing does not happen only in classroom or workplace settings, but acts as a variegated social communication tool as well nowadays. However, from the perspective of academic writing, it might be considered onerous with the negotiation of whether e-communication enhances or contributes to the decay of critical and creative writing skills arises. A study conducted in Britain's Coventry University found that texting does not adversely affect students’ linguistic abilities but help to develop their word and vocabulary recognition. Yet, Humphrey argued in article published by The Daily Mail in 2007 stating that text messaging does deteriorate English Language by “pillaging our punctuation, savaging our sentences, raping our vocabulary” and allowing informal language such as emoticons and internet abbreviations such as “LOL” to slip into the in-class writing. For instances, have you ever come across a situation whereby you want to type a “you” in a formal letter but unconsciously, you represented it with an abbreviation  “u” until your friends notify you about it. This shows how great is the impact of e-communication as a threat to formal writing for academic purposes, for it will instinctually shape a habit of ignoring the syntactical and grammatical rule as what e-communication always does.

In addition to that, students always complain about the lack of idea and difficulty of organising their ideas into written words when come to academic writing. Research has proven that internet has indeed ‘rewired’ the way our brains retain and retrieve information. Try reflecting how long will you spend on a single page when you are browsing through the Web normally? The internet offers so many gateways to infinity number of pages, that it has made it difficult for us to focus on one piece of information at a time. Such convenience provided by the Web is very destructive to writing skills at the same time, for it causes people to be less focus or mindful to their inner thoughts and ideas but continue indulging in the momentum of finding information through browsing others’ opinions on the internet. Hence, people often find it difficult to structure their thoughts into written piece, concluding that writing is an arduous task.          

Supported by those downside factors highlighted above, I would suppose that writing for academic purposes is an arduous task challenged by e-communication but this obstacle can be overcome if one put in hard effort into learning the formal manner of composing despite the informal writing style for socialization through internet. Although students nowadays are more interested and impassioned about the writing they pursue out of class, class time is essential to draw distinctions between different types of writing, so that both formal and informal writing can be acquired in the learning process for different purposes. However, writing itself is absolutely not an arduous task as one just has to stop worrying about whether their writing makes sense or not and let their ideas, feelings and imagination flow to the tip of the pen. An expression from the bottom of the heart will certainly create a splendid, magnificent and heart shaking piece of written work.