Yet Another Exercise in Writing Taxonomies
The natural six month cadence of my software documentation cycle is currently on its down swing. This means that my creative free energy is currently growing, which means that I am entering a “I have been thinking a lot about X lately” phase where I start every single newsletter draft with that phrase before revising it ever so slightly. Sometimes though, that is the correct place to start.
So I have been thinking a lot about the taxonomy of writing. There are a dozens of existing taxonomies, but as I work on a wide variety of writing projects, I find myself ruminating on a four pronged classification. The author, the aim, the audience, and the allowance.
The author and audience is self explanatory. The aim, I had been internally referring to as intention repeatedly before I realized there was a word that began with A that allowed for alliteration. The allowance is technically an off shoot of an audience, but feels sufficiently different when I started writing examples.
When the author is an individual trying to express desire/want/longing to another individual with only that individual in mind. We call that a love letter. When the allowance is a public audition, we call that a public proclamation.
When the author is an individual trying to convey narrative and everyone is welcome, that’s a story. To convey aesthetic, that is poem. When it is to process my own history and emotions and I guess others are allowed to watch, I think that’s whatever I’d call Miyazaki’s latest film, The Boy and The Heron.
The Boy and The Heron is really the source of this. And it’s not a perfect framework, but it is a framework.
Multiple authors aiming to teach is a curriculum. Multiple authors aiming to collaborate amongst themselves is a TTRPG campaign. When it is broadcast, you call it a let’s play or actual play depending on the exact level of detail you provide.
Author. Aim. Audience. Allowance.
I have been working on my first (well, technically second) solo constructor crossword credit, not for any reason in particular, but because it is a challenge that feels close once I figure out how to make a fillable grid consistently. At time of writing, all of my published crosswords have been with the same collaborator. That will change in time, but I have managed to make other crosswords. For individuals. Bespoke things.
Author: me.
Aim: to convey friendship.
Audience: An individual.
Allowance: An individual, but only by technicality.
The labeling of a thing under this 4A taxonomy is independent of its eventual form. The labeling is still useful. The questions it posits is still useful. Is the difference between a diary and memoir in its intent or its allowance? When does a memory become a history become a mythology? If form is independent of the criteria that identify it, what would a more complete classification entail?
I have been thinking a lot about myself an an author. About my aim. About my audience. About the allowance. The difference between a public and publicized presence. The difference between me (the creative) and me (the information developer) and me (the observer). How the variance in author creates a variance in aim which cascades to the audience and the allowance. I have been thinking a lot about bespoke things. About the joy of making something with specific intent for a specific reason for a specific time.
In both high school and undergrad argumentation, they taught me the fundamentals of persuasion: logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos. Kairos is the that sorta exists outside the core three of logic, authority, and emotion. Timeliness. The singular capturing of. The bottling of lightning. The alchemy of it. Every single time I write, I am trying to bottle something.
I am trying to do something only I could do. Or most days, something only I would do. And a lot of times, it’s writing the same thing over and over and over. In different ways. In different roundabouts.
But the practice of, the ritual of, the recurrence of. There is a power in that. As there is a power in constantly challenging how we view the things we do and why.
The author is me. The aim is to write more to see what comes next. The audience is you. The allowance is all. And hence, it is a newsletter. Or blog. If it was recorded in audio, we’d call it a podcast. In video, a vlog. So there is absolutely another A that needs to be amended, but this was not week to discover that portion of the formula.