ACADEMIC WRITING

Money has always driven the people of the world toward thinking actively and performing efficiently. I too belong to this category of common people that have lust for wealth and thirst to find the ways to achieve it some way. The easiest job in the world is writing something that interests us for some reasons and the difficult job is to make our writing highly interesting even to others. Many have been doing it for ages and it is not an impossible thing as such. Creativity is there in everybody and the forms in which it is expressed differ depending on the abilities of the individuals concerned. When we are not great writers, we need to conform to the rules and regulations set by others when we need some work to be given by them to write on and earn. The Internet is at our doorstep with its abundance of information and knowledge in textual and pictorial formats. Once one could say, ‘I don’t have much to research’, and now one should say, ‘I can’t research all this’. Rich and lazy ones mostly find it difficult to search for new things or research the old things and so employ the poor and dynamic ones to carry out those tense things. It is creativity if one could bring out something novel after the search into one’s own and it is ‘scholarly endeavor’ when something different could be created after understanding the given things and adding one’s rational or irrational inputs to it. The prior write essays, short stories, novels, poems, articles, reviews and so on being labeled as ‘writers’ and the latter belong to the category of ‘academic writers’. The works of the prior are not subject to limitations imposed by others; rather they inflict their ideas or fantasies on others. The latter are the suffering lot for they need to be highly rational and professional in whatever they write since they need to impress others. Academic writing is meant for constructive development of the human thought and the related debates among the concerning professionals or intellectuals. When something is subject to criticism by others, one needs to be very careful in what one is writing. This necessitates one to follow certain guidelines or norms formulated or imposed by others for their own purposes. Without much understanding about these risk factors of academic writing, I recently contacted an American company that deals with content creation and distribution. They need writers to write on the assigned topics, blindly following the rules prescribed by them. They can’t help being strict toward the writers for they need to conform to the expectations held by their clients that give them work. I informed the company that I was interested in academic writing and I desired to work for them to earn money. The attractive feature of this job is that we get paid very handsomely if we deliver qualitative work within the chasing deadlines. The companies clearly state on their websites what they are expecting from the writers. Half of the enthusiastic writers fear to contact the representatives of these companies, after reading the content provided by them regarding the do’s and don’ts. Yet I remained a daredevil and awaited the response from the company. They quickly responded to me and assigned me a written work as part of the test to be chosen by them as a ‘writer’ to work with them. I was supposed to write an essay of two pages on an easy topic given by them in a writing style that is widely in use in the academic circles of the west. They also provided me with a few online sources reading which I can have an idea of the expected content by them. I read the word files downloading them from the Internet and it took five hours. Then I started writing my essay and finished it within half an hour. They instructed me to adequately cite others’ works in my essay to make it ‘research oriented’ which is an essential characteristic of the academic writing. I did/could not do it at all.

The ones that write for money on various topics given by their employer are commonly known as freelance writers. Their work should be very interesting and look very professional in terms of the quality of the language used and the depth of the subject discussed. There should be an issue at hand or in mind and it should be presented in the introductory part of the essay. Various concepts or arguments centered on the introduced topic should logically follow in the latter part of the piece of writing. Toward the end, they should place a convincing or thought-provoking conclusion. Supporting one’s main topic with various examples and evidences collected from others’ works requires a lot of research. With research come the points of copyright law and plagiarism. Every writer has the intellectual property rights regarding the works created or developed by him or her based on his or her creativity or depending on others’ works to some extent. Not mentioning the details of the works referred to falls under plagiarism. In other words, copying and pasting the phrases or sentences or paragraphs of other writers, as they are, into our own works, and thus trying to become great writers, is a serious offence. Acknowledging every source we use for developing our written work is mandatory. One can understand diverse and scholarly concepts reading others’ works to improve oneself intellectually and it is not a wrong thing to do. Plagiarism is about being ungrateful toward the people and sources that helped us think greatly and write effectively. Academic writing authoritatively condemns plagiarism and it orders the writers to follow various rules and regulations while using and citing others’ writings in one’s own work. This compelled me to comprehend various mandatory things to be followed in academic writing to escape myself from being labeled as the ‘victim of plagiarism’. There is lots of information on these aspects of citing works on the Internet. I need to search a lot in those domains of information to become an effective academic writer. Thus I have to divert my attention from my important work ‘writing the essay’ to ‘understanding the norms of the profession’. This evident fact disturbed me a lot. There is going to be nothing serious if I remain poor being unable to cope with the demands of ‘academic writing’. People that have time and patience and aptitude to accurately conform to these strict legalities and formalities of academic writing are the right ones to earn money in this profession. I understood that I can’t fit in this setting of ‘norms’. I like such writing assignments which do not require even a bit of research and even one page titled ‘references’ or ‘works cited’ or ‘bibliography’ toward the end of the essay developed. I can’t develop ideas or arguments seeking advice or assistance from other writers or works. This remains a stumbling block on my path toward becoming an ‘academic writer’. My mind is so adamant and chaotic that it never listens to others. Even if it ever listens, it seldom follows what they said to do. The same happened in this case also. They sent back my essay and asked me to revise it incorporating the changes expected by them from the beginning. They are right in their orientation in this regard and I can’t blame them for this. When something needs to become ‘academic’ ‘authentic’ or ‘universal’, it requires containing the norms and forms of the ‘research’ ‘logic’ ‘evidence’ ‘compliance’ and ‘legality’. I like to write on what I feel about the world around me and the impulses and instincts that push me to write on something are my guides in this regard which may be foolish, immature and uncivilized at times. Academic writing concerns convincing others with our arguments based on proof and logic.

Creative writing pertains to entertaining or educating or misguiding or spoiling or scaring or inspiring others using our creative faculty in various dimensions. The writers that dream of a prosperous and happy world mostly write to ‘educate’ or ‘entertain’ others.

Creative writers are essentially the followers and upholders of absolute liberty and dreams in their ways of thinking and exhibiting it in words meant for others to read. They are dreamers and utopians in thought and action. They wish to show a fantastic world to their readers to delight them in some way and sometimes they may pepper their creativity with reality as well if they desire to educate them in some aspects of their lives or guide them toward a peaceful or ideal state of human coexistence. They can make anything sensational at will and they can turn ‘extraordinary’ into ‘nothing’ within seconds. Words are their weapons and they always remain sharp. They do not like to be constrained by the orders of others for they are not professionals trained in ‘conformity’ and ‘aping’. Birds fly to such ordinary places which they like depending on the forces of the seasons and one can’t find reasons for why they chose those places only avoiding other extraordinary places labeled by the intelligent and calculative man. Creative writers write on such topics which they like just like that being influenced or impressed by their observations in their familiar or unfamiliar surroundings or visualizations or the contemplations or complications flowing or blowing internally, quite rationally or idiotically. Wilderness is loved by those that are very bored with the mundane work lives in the cities and concrete jungles look fascinating for the folks living in the forests for ages. So, the writings of these crazy and unruly fellows are predominantly liked by those that are inescapably involved in the formally oriented and legally binding professional and personal schedules. They dare touch those corners of the human psyche and facets of the visible world that are quite absurd or inaccessible when perceived from the perspectives of the common that never think about the uncommon or the uncommon that rarely aspire to live and think as the common. Their opinions change within seconds and their arguments look quite irrational and illogical when observed by scholars and critics of academic and practical world. They wish to hide in the jungles when many fans run after them demanding more writings from them based on fun or gun or pun. They can’t write on the same topic repeatedly in an influential style for they have the habit of constant reorientation and reformation to stay prolific. In this scenario, how can they fit in the framework of reason and caution demanded and imposed by the agents of critical and analytical debate centered on research and renovation? This is where the academic writers challenge these poor and innocent creatures asking them; ‘can you write on this topic as logically and as argumentatively as I can?’ They helplessly defend themselves retorting timidly; ‘can you write on anything quite illogically and ordinarily and yet making it very interesting and influential?’ Internal conflicts and professional egos are present in every field of creativity. Both remain restless breaking their heads day and night. A scientist hates dreams that lack cohesion or relevance to reality. A creative writer runs after meaningless dreams and fancies trying to catch and explore them to see if some magic is hidden in them which couldn’t be detected or utilized by the ordinary. The point is that one should activate one’s brain in some way and then it would certainly yield some fruits that may look bitter today to many but sweet and commendable one day. If somebody says that he or she is a ‘creative writer’, one should not believe it at all. They are also using the same language invented by some and being used by all; they are also writing aiming readers that have a logical sense of appreciation of others’ works and they have also certain rules and regulations imposed by themselves. How can they be considered ‘creative’ unless the readers test their abilities and qualify them to that ‘word’ some day after much thought?

Datla Chiranjeevi Raju