Tag Archives: Writing

News

A New Writing Club

 

By Ashley Torres

At NECC, there are many clubs and activities for students to participate in, but writing is one particular area not yet covered by them. Abraham Anavisca is a Writing major who thought of a way to get writers together and share their ideas, so they can learn from one another: a writing club.  He is still going through the process of getting the all of the paperwork done, but looks forward to being able to get started soon.

“As soon as things are done then I will start making the schedules,” he said.

Tentatively, the club is planning to meet once or twice a month in the afternoon.  The club would be based on fiction writing and focus on building characters.  Professor Tom Greene will be the club advisor, which a huge plus considering his extensive background in literature.

Courtney Hanson is also majoring in Writing. She is on board with the club and sees it as a way to help improve one’s writing skills while using other students’  critiques. She mentioned how it is a different learning experience to hear what students have to say than to hear it from professors.

If you are a writer who occasionally has trouble putting all your thoughts and ideas together, then this might be a great opportunity for you. Benefiting from the critiques of other writers is one thing, but getting to interact with other people with the same interests is also a solid way to invest your time in the NECC community.

 

Arts and Entertainment, Campus Life

Parnassus Accepting Submissions

 

Parnassus is the nationally recognized and award winning literary magazine featuring student artwork, poetry, creative nonfiction, photography, and short stories submitted by students of NECC. It also featured guest authors such as Stephen King, Gregory Maguire and Junot Diaz in years prior. It gets published yearly and comes out in May, provides a wonderful opportunity for students to get their work recognized and looks excellent on a resume.

Parnassus has been around since 1965.  It celebrates the artistry and creative minds of the student body of NECC and presents it in the form of a graphically striking, unique and funky magazine that catches the eye. The publication got its name from the mythical mountain of the muses in Greek.

Parnassus’ goal going into its 51st year of publication is to be in the running to be submitted for various awards. Last year, unfortunately Parnassus could not be eligible for any awards because it missed the entry deadlines. However, this year it will be a priority.

Students interested in submitting their creative work can email Patrick Lochelt at plochelt@necc.mass.edu.

There will also be flyers around campus and a submission box located on the third floor of the Spurk Building outside the liberal arts lounge.

Writing submissions have a Dec. 1 deadline and can be emailed or dropped off in the submission box.

Editorial

Why it’s Important to Write Well

 

It’s not always important for your writing to be clear. The thing that’s important, for a journalist, is to know why, sometimes, it should be clear, and why sometimes it doesn’t need to be — because it really, really needs to be in a newspaper. The vast majority of people in the vast majority of cases can get by with writing that’s just okay. This writing might contain errors, or confusing paraphrases, or sentences that, technically, mean something very different than the thing they intended to say.

When you’re writing for a small audience — one person or a handful of people — and you know that audience, or at least know pretty much what kind of people they are, and you know they’ve got a lot in common with you, you can often trust that they’ll fill in the blanks correctly. You can trust that they’ll recognize your voice and insert what they already know about your opinions. You can trust that they’ll bring their own expertise on the topic to unpick ambiguities. And, vitally, you can trust that they’ll ask you to clarify when they can’t work it out, or when they’re not sure they’ve worked it out correctly.

That’s why it’s never really a problem that most people are just okay — or even quite bad — at writing. When your audience will ask “What did you mean?” and you can reliably respond, you don’t need to craft exceptionally refined prose to move ideas from your mind to theirs.

It’s important for journalists to understand that exactly zero of those charities are available to them when writing for print. You cannot trust that a newspaper’s readers recognize your voice in your writing. You cannot trust that they share your basic values or knowledge or intuition. You cannot trust that they know the same idioms as you, and you absolutely cannot trust that you will ever get a chance to clarify.

Even if you publish a correction, the majority of your readers are never going to see it. They’re only ever going to get the wrong version of the story, and they’re never going to know to ask.

When you write for print, you’re always writing not just for people who share your general context, but for people who disagree with you, and will interpret you either to confirm their own view, or uncharitably to discredit yours; people who’ve never learned the first thing about concepts you’ve been getting comfortable with for your whole life; people whose first language isn’t English, and who don’t have nearly the same amount of practice as you in solving the puzzles of other people’s writing mistakes; people who come from another part of the country or the English-speaking world and use some parts of the language totally differently than you do.

(Did you know, for example, that the word ‘quite’ is usually meant to emphasize in American English — ‘quite good’ means ‘very good’ — but to diminish in UK English — ‘quite good’ means ‘kind of good, but not very?’ I used the word quite in the fourth paragraph of this piece. That makes the meaning of that paragraph kind of slippery, doesn’t it?)

Understanding this relationship between writer and reader — and understanding the way it can shift — is a valuable life skill in general, especially online. It helps to keep in mind that you can expect a different level of charity and understanding from your Facebook friends than a stranger on a forum, or in an email to a coworker, versus a client, versus your mom. Keeping it in mind will make you a more effective communicator — and, if you’re a journalist, keeping it in mind is a pretty good summary of your job description.