I think what Kaj is responding to, is that the post doesn’t have the abstract clarity of purpose of a typical post in the Main forum. It’s more of a personal history and a passionate exhortation to reward agency when it appears within the LW community. It’s a bit out of line for me to play LW front-page style-pundit, when I am mostly a careless creature of Discussion and have no ambition to shape LW’s appearance or editorial norms, and I even sort of like the essay as it is; but it probably does deserve a rewrite. (It’ll get twice as many upvotes if you do it really well.)
Its true, my writing is not as high quality as most of the top level posts. I’m not a professional writer at all. Although I did get someone good to edit this for me, so its much better than it would have been without that.
I don’t know of anyone who is a better writer than I am who understands and cares enough about this content enough to put it out there, so I did it myself. If you or anyone you know who is a better writer would like to do a rewrite, by all means, I would love for them to do it!
I don’t think it’s the general quality of your writing that’s causing problems; I think it’s a particular, specific flaw in this essay. Compare this comment thread to the one under ‘How To Deal With Depression’—there’s agreement and there’s disagreement, but unlike in this comment thread there’s no deep confusion about what your point is and how your essay supports it.
So what is that flaw? My theory is that ‘agentiness’ is psychological phlogiston, an imprecise non-explanation which should be purged from our collective vocabulary with great force. Taboo it, decompose it and retry.
If I’m right about the problem but wrong about the solution, my next best guess is that you’ve chosen too complicated an anecdote. I can see why you wouldn’t want to expand on the hospital story specifically, but something about that size might work better.
I think what Kaj is responding to, is that the post doesn’t have the abstract clarity of purpose of a typical post in the Main forum. It’s more of a personal history and a passionate exhortation to reward agency when it appears within the LW community. It’s a bit out of line for me to play LW front-page style-pundit, when I am mostly a careless creature of Discussion and have no ambition to shape LW’s appearance or editorial norms, and I even sort of like the essay as it is; but it probably does deserve a rewrite. (It’ll get twice as many upvotes if you do it really well.)
Thanks for explaining.
Its true, my writing is not as high quality as most of the top level posts. I’m not a professional writer at all. Although I did get someone good to edit this for me, so its much better than it would have been without that.
I don’t know of anyone who is a better writer than I am who understands and cares enough about this content enough to put it out there, so I did it myself. If you or anyone you know who is a better writer would like to do a rewrite, by all means, I would love for them to do it!
I don’t think it’s the general quality of your writing that’s causing problems; I think it’s a particular, specific flaw in this essay. Compare this comment thread to the one under ‘How To Deal With Depression’—there’s agreement and there’s disagreement, but unlike in this comment thread there’s no deep confusion about what your point is and how your essay supports it.
So what is that flaw? My theory is that ‘agentiness’ is psychological phlogiston, an imprecise non-explanation which should be purged from our collective vocabulary with great force. Taboo it, decompose it and retry.
If I’m right about the problem but wrong about the solution, my next best guess is that you’ve chosen too complicated an anecdote. I can see why you wouldn’t want to expand on the hospital story specifically, but something about that size might work better.
Hope this helps.
I agree that there isn’t a problem with Shannon’s prose. I thought agentiness was a clear concept, but I might be kidding myself.