On Topics

After “challenging”, a less heavy-handed word for “assigning,” my eleventh and twelfth grade English class to develop, edit and post a single blog in the upcoming week, I realized that this command would leave our recently generated class blog with nothing but a simple introductory post featuring an excited Eskimo lady as its sole covering, and being wintertime here on the shore such provision simply would not be enough. However, as those same senior high students pointed out amid their exultant shrieks of ecstasy resulting from their encounter with a formidable academic challenge, selecting a topic to write on is easier said than done.

You see the exuberant author runs the risk of exhausting his resources on too small a topic. Analogous situations have been observed among the twitterpated Junior high male who, though leaving home with fiscal certainty, having emptied his pockets on supper at five, leaves him and his lady without entertainment for the remainder of the suddenly awkward evening. Of course the conundrum exists on the opposite extreme as well. For instance, certain topics such as “The History of Religion” or “The Migration Patterns of the Bobolink”are entirely capable of swallowing the writer in a single gulp leaving behind not even a jot or tittle of individualistic style.

What is needed is a topic wholly capable of holding the attention of the author, for if the topic can hold his attention, the writer stands a very good chance of sculpting his assertions on that topic in such a way which might hold his audience’s attention on that same topic. E.g., say some Padawan would take for his material the whaling business as it stood in the nineteenth century. With such an expanse of primary source material, it would be quite possible for the writer to turn Mellville-ian and attempt to chronicle not only the history, modern adaptations, folklore and logistical formatting of a proper pursuit of a certain whale. It would be a thousand times more preferable however and much more interesting for that same author to simply chronicle the exact descriptions and reflections, from those crews who documented such, concerning the taste of whale-steak after which he would offer his own anecdotal take on the taste of the giant fish’s muscular anatomy stemming from personal experience received from a floundered cruise off the western most tip of Alaska.

          The author that finds such a topic is the author capable of saying what he needs to say without the fear of others not caring a hoot what it is he has to say.