Everyday Rhetoric

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A lot of times, rhetoric is taught in college with the immediate purpose of helping students become better at writing college papers.

But what I love about rhetoric is it’s everyday, normal uses.

Pen and paper

When we first moved into this apartment, my daughter’s door would jam, and sometimes I would have a really hard time opening it. Twice I couldn’t open it at all and had to have my husband do it.

Maintenance said they couldn’t fix it, and that it was normal for the doors to jam. Something to do with air pressure and humidity, ya dah ya dah ya dah.

So I thought, what is the strongest possible reason I can make for why my daughter’s door needs to be fixed? The fact that it was annoying, irritating, or challenging was obviously not good enough.

I told the office that I was worried about it being a fire hazard: what if there was a fire and I couldn’t get the door opened because it was jammed?

Within an hour, my daughter’s door was fixed.

Now fast forward. Several weeks ago, I put in a work order for maintenance to fix a number of small, yet irritating things. Like my towel rack. I like to hang up my towel. Yet for some reason or another, my request got lost in the shuffle.

One of the things on the list was switching the air filter (the office had said maintenance could do it the first time so I could see how it was done). So this morning, I removed the 20 inch by 20 inch air filter from the ceiling vent. It was one of the filthiest things I have ever seen. I brought my baby, my toddler, and the filthy air filter to the main office.

Dirty air filter

Within an hour, everything on my list had been fixed.

I intentionally didn’t bring the baby backpack, a stroller, or anything that would have made my trip easier. That would have damaged the visual impact. The office assistant said, “You know you can just throw that air filter away.” What I didn’t tell her is that I knew I could just go to the office and they’d give me a new air filter, but I had brought the old one with me because I wanted all my maintenance requests to be fixed.

And it worked.

And that’s why I love rhetoric. As Aristotle wrote, rhetoric is using “the available means of persuasion.” It’s not just about getting an A on a college paper–though rhetoric can certainly help you do that as well. It’s about using your voice to make changes in the world, particularly when they’re not changes you can make on your own.

 

Photo Credits:

Writing is Like… (Part 5)

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Writing is like taking care of sick kids. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of time. Your kids and your writing always seem to need you, and sometimes they keep you up all night.

Sick child

Like taking care of sick kids, writing can involve cleaning up gross messes.

Sometimes you need to seek professional advice and go to a doctor (or a writing instructor, writing tutor, or critique group). The doctor, ideally, has spent a lot of time with sick kids and has seen these sorts of problems before. The doctor then gives you one or more prescriptions—be it antibiotics, a grammar prescription, a prescription on your argument, your research, or your writing style.

With sick kids and with writing you do all that you can, and you often experience slow improvements. Sometimes you just need to let time play its part.

Writing is not always fun and games. Neither is taking care of sick kids, something I can attest to, as I’ve been taking care of a sick baby and a sick toddler for the last few weeks. It may not always be fun, but it is worth it.

 

Photo Credit: Lauren Grace Picture Place

If you want to know why writing is like kissing and a great number of other things, make sure to check out all my “Writing is Like” posts.

You Know it’s a First Draft When…

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You know it’s a first draft of your novel when you write the following sentences in one of the closing scenes of your book:

They kissed. And then they kissed some more.

Yes. I just put that in my novel. It will be much different in the second draft. It will still involve kissing, but that will probably be the only similarity.

In good news, I just finished the first draft of my electric eels novel. It came in at 48,615 words, and is missing a number of scenes that won’t be added to the second draft, simply because I need to completely revamp one of the main story lines.

But I know that I’m done with this draft. Do you know how I can tell? I just got to the point in the story where I could type the following two words:

The End

Having seen the quality of what else I wrote today, I’m sure you’ll agree those are the best two words I wrote today.