As a writer, what do you believe in?
I believe in black ink, yellow legal pads, Castell 9000s, Mongols, Ticonderogas, wooden pencils in general, mechanical pencils in general, erasers in general, Pelikans, Safaris, Uni-ball Signos, the T-Ball Jotter, index cards, Post-it Notes, pocket notebooks (Field Notes, IBM Think pads, Moleskines), a larger notebook that my daughter gave me (Moleskine), PocketMods, nvALT, Simplenote, TextWrangler, WriteRoom.
But also: any available paper, any available Bic.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Writing and belief
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comments: 6
Used envelopes.
A surprising acreage of clean space, recycling what would otherwise be trash...what's not to like?
You and Emily Dickinson, both. :)
As a philosopher, I would pick on the word "belief", which means "confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof" [dictionary dot com]. Therefore, as a writer I would say, I believe in walking outside for inspiration, or maybe, I believe that my first draft is always the best draft.
I was going for this application: “to have a firm conviction as to the goodness, efficacy, or ability of something” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate). My belief in the goodness of these materials doesn't’t come with much rigorous proof either. :)
With the better definition, your choices make sense now. Not that they didn't before - I was just being annoying.
Let's see, "a firm conviction as to the goodness of X..." Alas, now we are into metaethics (which I am studying) and what is the definition of "good"? Is 'good' an objective thing, is it a quality or property, is it only relative as in "better than Y"? We are reading Kant's 3rd critique (aesthetics) for this tutorial. My head hurts. Interestingly, I find my thoughts often wander back to Pirsig and "Zen and the Art" which I have read three times, each time with a different goal. He ended up defining "quality" in the book as "the place where the subject meets the object" but then, that starts to make my head hurt too.
I think in these things, “good” means “works for me.” Or it means, as Wittgenstein might say, all kinds of things, many different elements of design and usefulness.
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