The Atoms Of Writing

Gary Lutz's lecture had one main target that was explain how words affect writing. I liked how he went from very specific to broad when going from the words to the sentence to the paragraph. The sentence is composed of words that by themselves do not mean anything. The words are the smallest part of writing that has a meaning, almost as if they were the atoms of writing. These words when placed together in a sentence by a writer can have the ability to be a good sentence or not. According to Lutz: "But too often our habitual and hasty breaking away from one sentence to another results in sentences that remain undeveloped parcels of literary real estate, sentences that do not feel fully inhabitated and settled in by language". When a word is not placed by the author in accordance to the other words then the sentence can lose its meaning. I really agreed with this part and I somehow saw this out of sentence sometimes showed in the actions of one friend. If we are all happy and having a good time he has to be angry and trying to make us all have a bad time. When we are all bored and tired he is the one that is full of energy trying to make us happy. In the sentence when the words do not fit together then they may change the meaning. As said by Lutz "And as the words reconstitute themselves and metamorphose, your sentence may begin to make a series of departures from what you may have intended to express", and it is true one word can change the meaning of the whole sentence. I really liked how this lecture managed to incorporate personal experiences of the author and at the same time link it to the topic he is going to discuss.