Parallelism in Writing: When to Use and When to Skip

Genuinely concerned for our future generation of kids and their ability to write constructively and with some PERSONALITY. Every post is the same sentence structure and reads with the same voice. We “”AI”ded writing adults are ushering in an era of standardized language and no unique tone. Sure you get the point across effectively and quickly but… BORING!

When the structure of information changes, the structure of thought changes with it The Historical Pattern Oral to literate transition: The elders who carried wisdom in memorized epic poetry, in proverb, in ritual gesture, suddenly faced children whose minds were being restructured by the alphabet. Literacy rewired cognition toward linearity, abstraction, and individual silent reading. The oral elder’s wisdom was embodied, communal, rhythmic, contextual. It required a mind shaped by oral culture to receive it. That mind was disappearing. Plato — himself a product of the transition — tried to bridge it and ended up writing dialogues that imitated oral debate. Even he felt the loss. He put in Socrates’ mouth the warning that writing would destroy memory and create the appearance of wisdom without its substance. He was right. He wrote it down anyway. The irony was unavoidable. Manuscript to print transition: The scholar-monks who had spent lifetimes developing the arts of slow reading, contemplative interpretation, and manuscript annotation — suddenly faced a world of cheap, identical, mass-produced texts. Their wisdom about how to read — as a spiritual practice, as transformation, as conversation with the dead — was incomprehensible to a generation that read for information, for argument, for the new. Speed replaced depth as the implicit value. The monk’s wisdom was not refuted. It became a different file format. Print to broadcast transition: The 19th century produced extraordinary literary culture — people who thought in long arguments, nested qualifications, sustained narrative. The broadcast generation thought in images, in emotional arcs, in the logic of the moving picture. The person who could write a devastating political essay found themselves helpless in front of a camera. Their wisdom — encoded in a textual architecture — could not survive translation into the new medium’s grammar. And now: The digital native does not just consume information differently. They think differently. Nonlinearly. In networks rather than hierarchies. In parallel streams rather than sequential arguments. In images and memes that carry emotional-conceptual packages that resist verbal unpacking. The elder who achieved wisdom through sustained linear reading, through the slow accumulation of a coherent worldview built argument by argument — speaks in a format that arrives as noise. If the task is cognitive translation, then we first need to understand the data structure we are translating wisdom into.

HARD TALK I will not hesitate to block anyone who says the same thing to me, regardless of who they are. Some people bluntly say, “You have too much free time Nik” or “You write too much.” Such remarks do not reflect intelligence, but rather a lack of appreciation for knowledge, literature, and intellectual contribution. Let me ask this: when great writers spent years producing books that shaped minds and civilizations, did people accuse them of having too much time? When intellectuals and thinkers shared their knowledge through articles, essays, and commentaries that educated society, were they merely “writing too much”? When religious scholars painstakingly wrote thick kitabs to guide generations in faith, morality, and wisdom, were they wasting time? When Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi composed poems that still touch hearts centuries later, or when William Shakespeare wrote dramas and scripts that became references for millions of writers, poets, playwrights, and even modern filmmakers, did anyone say they simply had “too much time”? We share for the sake of mankind. We work like everyone else, carry responsibilities like everyone else, and face struggles like everyone else. Writing and sharing knowledge is a gift, and we choose to use that gift so it may benefit others. It is far better to spread knowledge, awareness, wisdom, experience, and meaningful discussions than to contribute to fake news, empty gossip, slander, or viral untruths that mislead society. The irony is that some people dismiss writers, reporters, journalists, poets, authors, and thinkers, yet they enjoy movies, documentaries, books, songs, and stories created through the dedication, sacrifice, creativity, and endless writing of others. Every meaningful civilization was built not only by warriors, businessmen, and leaders, but also by thinkers, scholars, and writers whose words preserved knowledge, inspired change, and shaped humanity. Writing is not a waste of time. Meaningless thinking is.

“Good prose is like a windowpane,” said George Orwell in an essay I was forcing myself to read. But after the first two paragraphs of “Why I write” (1946), I found myself actually enjoying it. The quote confused me, at first. Aren’t all forms of writing like a windowpane, where we experience the world through words. Then why prose in particular? So I looked up ‘windowpane’ in Google (Yes, I’m old-school like that) and Google told me that it is a piece of glass in a window. Maybe Orwell meant that good prose should be transparent and clarity-driven. Maybe he meant: just say what you have to say. Why bury it under ornate language? But reading this quote in isolation might give people the wrong idea. Earlier in the essay, Orwell gives four motives for writing: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. His words, not mine. And honestly, I think that every writer starts with the first three impulses, but it is the fourth - the desire to push the world in a certain direction, that transforms them into a good writer. Orwell himself admits that there was a time when the first three motives would outweigh the fourth for him. But later, as life brought him closer to political reality, his writing became “serious work”, where every line has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism. And that made me rethink the “windowpane” quote. Because Orwell was never asking writers to sacrifice artistic or intellectual depth for clarity. If anything, he is proof that political writing can also be art. Anyone who has read Animal Farm or Nineteen Eighty-Four would probably agree. I’ll end this to-no-purpose stream of consciousness, with one last thing that I came across in the essay. Orwell mentions that he hopes to write another novel soon, and then says: “It is bound to be a failure.” The novel he was talking about was 1984. So maybe this is for everyone who has picked up a pen, only to put it down again after second-guessing themselves. Just write it. #orwell #streamofconsciousness #insights

If you are a writer who wants to improve a manuscript, but finds crit groups devastating, this technique I just learned about might be a good fit:

Thrilled that I was able to attend Part 4 of Denis Hirson's inspirational online talks (arranged by Jacana) about writing a memoir. What stood out for me, particularly, and all of it was amazing, was the injunction to listen to yourself and to write from the heart, because nobody else in the world has your voice. To my mind, this is sound advice for all creative writing. But what about AI? Will it learn and mimic all our voices? It is already churning out books in different genres. We don't know the future effects of AI on creative writing but for now I will hold fast to the belief that tapping into our essence, writing from the heart and the gut, is what makes our voice real and unique. It will be my guiding light as I get back into the stream of new writing.

A couple of weeks ago, The Marlon Show on Dublin South FM welcomed writers: Gary J. Martin, Daniel Wade, Alan A.R McNevin & Donna Kennedy who joined from Alicante - Spain to discuss writing in the age of AI. A fascinating conversation you can listen back on this link… https://lnkd.in/e_hwJHa7 #themarlonshow #dublinsouthfm #communityradio #writing #artificialintelligence

There's something about long-form which makes it profound. Ten years of running a startup of short-form writing taught me that the most telling, most original quotable sentences are not what you can come up with just like that, while sitting on an armchair. Instead, you need to arrive at it. Through other words acting as steps, sentences clocking those kilometers, and paragraph breaks as the much needed rest—the quintessential break for hydration and normalization of breath in between the long wander. The most hauntingly beautiful quotes are therefore hidden within a book, in between lines that advance action or reveal character. Rushdie's profound, "Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence," resides silently somewhere in the middle of Midnight's Children. "The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets," takes a backbench in Arundhati Roy's great story about Rahel and Estha. The best sentences only come while writing, not while sitting and ideating. It's writing long form that allows the subconscious to take over and our mind to shush. Short-form barely gives us that window. It doesn't even let us forget our ego for intuition to lead. One of the best things you can do as a writer to hone that intuition is to just write without stopping for as long as you can. A simple stream of consciousness works—keep writing whatever comes to your mind. You'll be surprised to find some sentences that will make you wonder if it was really you who wrote that. How did you conceive of something that otherworldly? It's almost like a drug. Once you feel that, you won't ever desert an art form. I felt that in 2007, as a impressionable 18-year-old and look, I'm still writing as much, if not more, at 36. I'm certain most musicians, artists, designers, coders, even PPT makers feel that magic, which only comes while spending long times just serving a craft. You end ul creating something that baffles you. Because it is beyond you! The writer Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this in her TED talk. In ancient Greece and ancient Rome people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings. People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity “daemons.” Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar. The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius. Which is great, because the Romans did not actually think that a genius was a particularly clever individual. They believed that a genius was this, sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist's studio, kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work.

From blank page to "I know why each word is there." We spend a lot of time talking about *what* primary writers should produce. Far less about the inner monologue that produces it. This short captures the moment a Y6 writer stops looking for inspiration and starts reaching for cognitive tools, Identify, Sequence, Connect, Explain. Each card pulls a piece of the story into place. It's a tiny demonstration of what Schraw (1998) called strategic metacognitive regulation: the learner narrating their own thinking, picking the right move, and knowing why. The Thinking Framework gives that inner voice something to grip. #Pedagogy #PrimaryEducation #Metacognition

WriteRight4Life, LLC: The Core Philosophical Foundations of Psychological Authoring How I create. While unconventional, the work is part of me. https://lnkd.in/gjmVPbv9