9:55
“Who cares if it’s boring. Rick and I have been talking a lot about teaching and there’s this fundamental difference -- that comes up in freshman comp and haunts ya all the way through teaching undergrads -- is that there’s a fundamental difference between expressive writing and communicative writing. And one of the biggest problems in terms of learning to write or teaching anyone to write is getting it in your nerve endings that the reader cannot read your mind. That what you say isn’t interesting simply because you yourself say it. Whether that translates to a feeling of obligation to the reader, I don’t know. But we’ve all probably sat next to people at dinner or on public transport who are producing communication signals but it’s not communicative expression, it’s expressive expression. Right? And actually it’s in conversation that you can feel most vividly how alienating and unpleasant it is to feel as if somebody is going through all the motions of communicating with you but in fact you don’t even need to be there at all.”
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