WE #2: Citizens, Awake!

Written immediately after WE#1

From Take Ten #3-5, "A Forkful of Spoonerisms": Use a pair of spoonerisms--here in bold--to bookend your timed writing piece. I added the note that "the combination of time pressure and little space at the end of a page should serve as incentives to keep things brief" and cut down on my tendency to ramble. It worked--too well: I was told it was too short.

A crushing blow against freedom and democracy was dealt this day by enemies of the state. The state bird is, as everyone knows, a stately, regal raven; it is featured prominently on all government stationary and, lately, on all its websites. Now, hacker group Incognito has hacked the government's servers and replaced the graphic of the state seal with a bemused, hot pink version. To arms, citizens, against these evil perpetrators of vile and shameful deeds, not to mention blasphemers of our sacred emblem! We cannot let these miscreants go unpunished--how can we leave things as they are now? Shall we let our national symbol remain the mockery that this craven group has foisted on us--shall we tolerate their fiendish transmogrification of our stately raven into a blushing crow?

WE #1: Philosophical Speculations

Written February 27, 2012

Independent idea trigger: Philosophizing (gah! why? I really don't know) about the limits on our freedoms in writing exercises...

So I was wondering, how free are we in these writing assignments? I would think, as vehicles for our expression, practice for growth as a writer, etc. etc., there should be as few restrictions as possible, so we can best develop our craft, etc. etc. But then we run into difficulties related to taste: should we be allowed to include prejudices, stereotypes, sexism, racism, profanity, or even sexual content?! (These roughly in order of offensiveness.) Not that I'd particularly want to--I tend to avoid these things myself. But how far can (or could) we push it before our attempts to more farther in the development of our writing skills runs into the wall of censorship, aka keeping such improprieties out of student work? And if some are permitted (the first two especially spring to mind here, as denying prejudices would be tantamount to denying your writing voice), then why not the others? As so often we have an unresolvable (at least, and in my mind, not satisfactorily resolvable) dilemma between pragmatism and principle...