Warsaw, Poland

School of Masters: Studies in Writing Techniques and Literary Text Presentation

Szkoła Mistrzów. Studia technik pisarskich oraz prezentacji tekstu literackiego

Table of contents

School of Masters: Studies in Writing Techniques and Literary Text Presentation at UW

Language: Polish Studies in Polish
Subject area: humanities
University website: en.uw.edu.pl

Definitions and quotes

Writing
Writing is a medium of human communication that represents language and emotion with signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spoken language. Writing is not a language, but a tool used to make languages be read. Within a language system, writing relies on many of the same structures as speech, such as vocabulary, grammar, and semantics, with the added dependency of a system of signs or symbols. The result of writing is called text, and the recipient of text is called a reader. Motivations for writing include publication, storytelling, correspondence, record keeping and diary. Writing has been instrumental in keeping history, maintaining culture, dissemination of knowledge through the media and the formation of legal systems.
Writing
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
Gospel of Thomas, in Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2004), p. 37
Writing
I'm a bit of a grinder. Novels are very long, and long novels are very, very long. It's just a hell of a lot of man-hours. I tend to just go in there, and if it comes, it comes. A morning when I write not a single word doesn't worry me too much. If I come up against a brick wall, I'll just go and play snooker or something or sleep on it, and my subconscious will fix it for me. Usually, it's a journey without maps but a journey with a destination, so I know how it's going to begin and I know how it's going to end, but I don't know how I'm going to get from one to the other. That, really, is the struggle of the novel.[1]
Martin Amis, Interview 1995.
Writing
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
John Ruskin, A Joy for Ever, note 6 (1857).
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