The Art of Functional Writing

    My teacher assigned us a heavy question to write about. The question was, "What does it mean to be a writer in 2014?" The only parameter that he gave the class was that it had to be one page. He did not tell us the repercussions of what would happen if we wrote more than one page of work, but I did not really want to find out what would happen for myself. The last thing I would want to do is make a teacher bore himself to sleep over reading a paper I tried to make into art.
     I shared the paper I wrote with a few people, one of them happening to be my mother. She told me that it was "Ok" and then I went on to edit it. I then shared it with my friend Tristan, who has a job editing papers, and he told me that my paper was wonderful. Afterwards, I shared my writing with my good friend Micah, whose opinion I value more than anything (not that Tristan's opinion was not valid, I just have not known him as long). Micah began questioning me on what the paper was supposed to be. He told me that the paper was "handcuffing me" because it gave me limited room to get my ideas out. He told me that it was an opportunity to learn a new form of art. It is the art of functional writing.
    Writing functionally is something that many people cannot do, while a good amount of others are able to. It is my goal this semester to learn the art of functional writing. I will teach myself to write a clear and concise essay, even if it is only allowed to be a page long in length. So, with that being said, here is the journal entry that I wrote for my English 111 class.

"What Does It Mean To Be a Writer In 2014?"

           What does it mean to be a writer in 2014? There are many possible answers to the question stated, seeing as there are many different writing styles and a plethora of modern authors and writers to choose from. People who invest time in their writing have the ability to capture the attention of their readers. Everyone is looking for something different today. To be a writer in 2014 means being able to articulate well and put one’s own thoughts into words on a page in a way that make sense and captures the reader’s thought.

            Being a writer means having a love of all things text. People who write generally like to write and they make a habit to do so, even if time does not allow them to every day. To be a writer means to make someone think about something more than only him or her. If a writer does not make someone think then they have to work to make another person do so. 

            T.S. Eliot said, “The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.” The quote could be taken in many different ways, but I think that what it means is that the text has to become the person who is writing it. It must become a part of them completely and they must become a part of it. Perhaps the quote should be reworded, someday, to say, “The purpose of literature is to turn ink into blood,” meaning that the work of the writer should come alive. The writer of the work should be as much of a part of the text as the text is a part of them. Writing takes time and it also takes talent. To me, that is what it means to be a writer; having talent, having the ability to construct ideas and record them, and to be able to keep the attention of the intended audience.

     I may not have received the best mark in regards to a run-on sentence here or there, but my professor  did not hate the piece.
     One must be able to write functionally and if a writer has not developed that skill then it is something they must work on; which is what I have been working on: to make my writing short and to the point when it needs to be.