2. Writing Blocks

Writing is hard. The English language is estimated to have over 1 million words. Given that the average sentence in English is 14 words long, there are over 10⁸⁴ possible word combinations for the average sentence. For any given sentence, a writer must use rules of syntax and semantic analysis to try narrow those combinations down to one mix that maximizes the communicative effectiveness of the sentence, in order to convey the meaning which is in their head (assuming that they already know what they want to write!)

For my last Writing 150 assignment, I repeated this process hundreds of times, which honestly is an unimaginable computational feat.

It's no wonder, then, that each time I sat down, I had no idea what to do. I find that when I first fire up my Microsoft Word to start typing away, I waste several minutes simply trying to find a train of thought and figure out exactly what it is that I want that special combination of words and grammar to communicate. It's so important to have a clear goal in mind when running this optimization: if you don't know what you're looking for, how will you know when you find it? In my future, I'll be making sure I have a clear idea of where I'm going before I write my paper. Once I find the right direction, the combinations slowly start coming until there is a comprehensible block of blabber which resembles an essay.

Such blabber requires several drafts before it reaches an acceptable final copy. Each draft represents a "local maximum" in the optimization of the sentence structure. In optimization problems, a local maximum is a place where any incremental change to the solution represents a "decrease." To escape local maxima, a large jump is needed.

This is where a writing lab or peer review is useful. When I took my initial draft to the writing lab, I honestly wasn't sure what I should do to improve my paper. And frankly, I wasn't sure what the lab assistant was going to be able to tell me that my spell checker hadn't already.

Luckily, I was wrong. In a pleasant and positive matter, I was quickly shown how to escape my local maximum and reach a far better place then I could have on my own. We read aloud through the paper together, and at the end she had a handful of simple suggestions and perspectives that I was not able to fully quantify on my own, and which allowed me to sit at a computer with renewed purpose and rearrange my words and sentences so that it was much more effective and logical in only a few minutes.

I am no longer skeptical about writing labs and look forward to escaping local maxima with them in the future.