Blog 7

 

Hi Everyone,

For this week’s blog, I want to mention the Elbow and Belanoff reading about the paradoxes, because those paradoxes are actually very interesting and make total sense! I think these ideas can help teach us about how to be convicted about the messages we want to convert, but also be receptive to things that may make our writing better. These paradoxes can both tackle insecurity (which I have a detrimental amount of) and overconfidence all together.

The first paradox, “The reader is always right; The writer is always right,” is interesting because unlike in customer service where only one party possesses agency, both parties possess some agency. (Elbow/ Belanoff 299) They balance each other out because although they possess agency and have some say so in what they say about a writing, they also rely on each other and have to respect what each other say about the writing. They each get to take and leave what they choose from the exchange. Really, this is how society should work, but we do not live in a utopian world. 

The second paradox, “The writer must be in charge. The writer must sit back quietly too,” was also very intriguing to me because you must claim your agency but give it up too! (Elbow/Belanoff 300) Like the previous paradox, it involves taking and leaving what you choose in regards to your work, but it adds an extra element of being open minded about what you receive, if I am not mistaken. The main thing that stood out to me was the part about making you understand what the reader misunderstands, because that is a clue to what is not really clear. In our heads many things may seem clear, but they are really not! So instead of feeling insulted or criticizing the other person, we need to take an inward look at ourselves. This kind of went in line with their idea of having the reader say it back to you because in that you can also see what the reader is or is not understanding. I wrote most of my opinions on this in my two-fold notes and they are pretty much entirely favorable! I enjoyed learning about these tactics very much!

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