Similarly Similar - Rhetoric, Opinion and Pre-Writing

Pre-writing. Whenever I hear "pre-" anything I think of that master of language George Carlin. He hated prefixes. "'At this time we'd like to begin the pre-boarding process.' What is that? Pre-board - to get on before you get on?"

Ok, that probably wouldn't make the final cut on a 5/5 essay. Nor will most of my blog entries. But I think they are useful tools for writing and learning about writing. I suppose it's all a pre-writing exercise, building up to a final paper or, in some cases a magazine article or even a book. Is there value in pre-writing exercises. Yes, of course. I suppose that's why we're pushed by teachers to participate in exercises such as brainstorming, outlining and rough drafts. Pre-writing allows you to "exercise your writing muscles" as one professor told my class once. It gets the creative juices flowing, allows you to test your ideas on paper. Often contrasted by how much sense they make in my head, they often don't look as great in print.

So writing allows us to ramble, to grumble, to lay it all out. Often the work I produce in pre-writing exercises becomes all the stuff I don't put in my paper. It usually ends up in the recycle bin. But from all this pre-writing mess I eventually start to form solid ideas. And I don't feel obligated to keep much of my pre-writing because, honestly, I'm not invested in it like I am a 3rd or 4th draft.

I'm far removed from high school English classes, but I remember a great deal of emphasis being placed on outlining - rigid outlines. I was required to submit a formal outline of everything I turned in for one teacher. Of course, I cheated and created the outline based on the paper I had already written. In college I feel as if I was already expected to know how to write (even though I'm paying lots of money to have someone teach me HOW to write). So I must say that pre-writing in general hasn't had much of an emphasis placed upon it. Maybe it was my hillbilly education or my avoiding all manner of planning, but I much prefer to just start writing and see where it goes.

I probably could stand learning some rules, tips and tricks on the writing process. So I'm curious to hear what everyone else has learned. I'd never heard of the 'ol 5/5 essay thing until Monday. I guess that's why I'm here.

As for Gorgias, I think I followed until he said: "All who have and do persuade people of things do so by molding a false argument. For if all men on all subjects had both memory of things past and awareness of things present and foreknowledge of the future, speech would not be similarly similar, since as things are now it is not easy for them to recall the past nor to consider the present nor to predict the future. So that on most subjects most men take opinion as counselor to their soul, but since opinion is slippery and insecure it casts those employing it into slippery and insecure successes" (2). I think he's equating persuasion to "false argument," which seems to me simply a euphemism for lying. Perhaps it's no small accident that many people have this opinion of rhetoric. Though Gorgias uses rhetoric to try to persuade us to share his opinion. I know, that's not what he would call it. But isn't that really what it is? Or is that simply my opinion? Now my head is spinning...