Let's talk about cupcakes.
Everyone likes cupcakes. There's two different components to a cupcake. There's the cake part itself, and there's the frosting. Most people like the frosting better, and even people who don't like cupcakes like to look at pretty or cute ones, because the frosting makes them look better. Most people also feel that making and frosting twenty four cupcakes is a lot more approachable than making and frosting a cake. People also feel like they can come up with an idea for a new flavor of cupcake easily, and it is possible to learn how to make a pretty tasty or a pretty, tasty cupcake. Also, most people won't stand for eating a cupcake with a bad base, bad frosting, or bad frosting job. (Pro tip: Practice is key, and younger siblings are usually willing food tasters, especially if your cupcakes keep getting better.)
Now, let's talk about writing, even though I'm sure most people wouldn't mind having RMI be a site about cupcakes.
Not everyone likes writing. Now why is that? To me, it seems fairly similar to cupcakes. There's two main components to writing: the ideas and the language you use to communicate those ideas to your reader. Sure, there's stuff like punctuation and independent and dependent clauses, but those are like sprinkles, other garnishes, or the different ingredients in your frosting. Also like frosting, when people are told they need to revise their writing, they prefer to focus on their language instead of how their ideas work together or are laid out in their writing. (In our extended metaphor, this would be like figuring out a new garnish for a cupcake where there's something wrong with the batter recipe.) And sometimes, all they need to do is work on their frosting. It's a lot less intimidating than re-working an entire paper. Just like a good cupcake, a good piece of writing starts with a solid idea. A pumpkin cranberry cupcake may sound good, but with a little tweaking, that recipe will become a batch of spiced pumpkin chocolate cupcakes that will barely make it out of the kitchen before being devoured. So too, an essay about the Age of Exploration may take off when you find that you can talk about all the different foods that traveled across the Atlantic and how they impacted the cuisines of Europe and of the Americas instead of “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...”
And like learning how to bake, it is possible to learn how to write. However, people are much more likely to tolerate a bad piece of writing than they are a bad cupcake. Why is that? It might be that they are still in the process of learning how to write, a process which takes a lot longer than learning how to make cupcakes, so they think that what they can do is the best. They might think that writing is an ability that you are born with, which is a load of bosh. If we were born knowing how to write, we'd have pencils and pens for fingers and I'd be spending all of this blog post focusing on cupcakes instead of the writing center. It could even be that there aren't any Institutes of Writing that are well known in the public sphere like many culinary schools.
However, while there isn't Literature Polyverbal Institute, there is such a thing as a Writing Center. Many colleges have one. Austin works at her college's, the author of Marissa Toladaeri is also a writing tutor, and the culinary school I attend has a writing center at which I can and do work. These writing centers are extremely helpful, mostly because having someone else look at your writing helps to catch things that you didn't see, things that you won't see because you know what it's supposed to say and it makes sense to you. As a tutor, I am not a Legilimens. I can't read your mind. The only way I have to understand your ideas is by what you have written down on that piece of paper. If something doesn't make sense to me, I can ask my tutee during the tutoring session what it means, and usually their verbal explanation will make more sense than what they have written down. This is most of what I do as a writing tutor: ask questions and make suggestions.
However, most people don't have the luxury of being able to sit down with the writer and ask them what this phrasing means or what they're trying to say or where the writer is going with this idea. That means you, as the writer, need to make sure your writing is ace, as Austin is fond of saying, for the reader's sake. As writers, unless we're writing in a private journal, we write for someone. That someone has to be able to understand our ideas as we understand them. For essays, this means that all your ideas are clearly communicated. For RMI, this means that you have realistic characters and understandable language. And that's where the writing center comes in, to help you gain (or regain) your sea legs.
The RMI Writing Center has resources to help with the technical side of writing, with character development, and with an already-completed piece of writing. Coming soon are more grammar guides and writing worksheets, as well as resources to make sure your character is realistic. If you're stuck on a post because your character's voice gave out halfway through, if you're posting a lot but no one's responding to you, if you're not posting because you can't think of anything to post, we have ways to help you! We can even look at non-RMI-related writing such as essays for school and college applications. We're also taking suggestions for other helpful things you guys would like to see on the Writing Center.
The goal of the Writing Center is to help you develop into better writers, just like the goal of a baking class is to teach you how to make better cupcakes. And the Writing Center doesn't even have to rely cake mix.
Pax,
Julia
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