Did anyone notice the incredible revision that Perl's piece must have underwent? Consider the second paragraph on p.xx. Then entire thing: ONE sentence!
Emig's piece made mention of a computer program that could measure style. This was a very interesting idea to me, especially when we harken back to the "voice is style" discussion. In said discussion, we seemed to come to a relative, though disputed, consensus that style is the definition of voice. We also consented to the notion that everyone's voices are simply a unique collection of voices that the individual has heard in her life. That is, her unique voice is really the replication (in part) of the many voices that have spoken to her in her life. So what interests me with this computer program is how well it truly is attuned to plagiarized style or voice. If I am really writing under the influences of Baldwin, Orwell, Dillard, Morrison, Hughes, etc., my work must somehow embody each of them, and if it does will the computer program recognize the repetition of these voices, which themselves would be made up of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Stein, etc.? Thus, the computer, if it can accurately recognize "style," should conclude that I write with Shakespeare's style? I don't know...this is a very difficult idea for me to reproduce in words (either out loud or written). Maybe you'll get why the notion of the "style-detecting computer" piqued my interest.
The discussion on outlining also interested me. I feel that I am also a part of that "middle group," the group that does a partial outline, and I think that Bassing described my method quite well when he called his own "chaotic." If one were to look at the pre-writing I do before I move onto the actual writing, the only descriptive I believe they would have is chaotic. My pre-writing goes all over multiple pages, with arrows, circles, bubbles, separating lines, bullets, numbers, single words, word phrases, sentences, etc. Nothing would be very discernable to anyone but myself, but how it appears on the page does not matter for me. It is the order in which my mind produces the thoughts and draws its own connections and conclusions. The neat and tidy writing that follows is how I believe I translate the pre-writing (my thoughts) to other humans. In conclusion, I am not quite sure. (I am beginning to think that this blog entry is just a meandering of my mind). But in conclusion I would say that pre-writing is necessary for "good" writing. It should not be specific in its layout (e.g., a rote outline form), per se, but it should be a method of organizations. I think that pre-writing is our method of translating our mind's language so that we can understand ourselves, and then the developed writing is how we translate our translated thoughts to the world around us.
I really liked the quote "statistics are 'figures of speech in numerical dress.'" I am not sure why. It might be because I like to draw equations between all disciplines. It's a good teaching strategy for those students who argue that they are "math" students or "art" students and are thus incapable of succeeding in a discipline outside of such. Anyway, it's a neat quote.
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