Next-Level Writing

I knew what I was going to type up for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I had it all readied in my brain, and committing it to the blog was just a matter of typing. The only thing I did not account for was falling on the ice and mangling my hand (that might be an overstatement - nothing broke, but a lot of things bent the wrong way for a bit). I am still writing the piece for MLK Jr. Day, but I apologize in advance to my loyal readers and to Dr. King himself for any and all typos.

If you ever get a chance, take the time to go to any of the libraries dedicated to Dr. King - there are over a dozen of them in our country, plus the main one in Washington DC. These are always informative trips, and they help bring your attention to some of his less-famous but nevertheless important writings, speeches, and notes. One thing that really stands out to me is in both his oratory and his essays, he had a very ingenious technique of writing that not only reinforced his point (that's the easy part), but then took it to the next level and introduced you to an idea you never saw coming. This is Next-Level Writing.

Normally, I would give an example from his writing, but in fairness, the examples I know are pretty wordy and would take a lot of time to break down and demonstrate how they worked. Therefore, I am going to use an example from a lesser writer - myself - just to show how the idea operates.

It's no secret that I spent most of my childhood living in poverty. It wasn't the obvious type, but rather a quiet, stealthy poverty that hid in the shadows and tore away at the foundation of our lives. This was a life where we depended on the social safety net to keep ourselves fed and with a roof over our head while the world unwove that very net. My family's health struggled while availability to get care vanished. Inflation took more away from us every year, and we had to run faster just to not fall behind. These were the days of government cheese and second-hand stores, all while being seen not just as a sad story in need of help, but as a deadweight society didn't want to carry.

Now, looking over that last paragraph, it just seems like a lot of discussion about poverty, perhaps even sounding a little self-victimizing, but definitely all about being poor. At face value, that's what it is, and that's what a lot of people would settle for. However, this becomes next-level when I bring up one special thread. All those points I made relating to how poverty felt had this common thread - the fact that these were all the result of government policies of the early 1980s. Leaving the last paragraph on its own would be fine, but when I point out how all these things were a direct result of specific government policies, then people see the real point of it. At that point, it's no longer just me saying, "Oh poor me, I was poor," but rather an indictment of policies that hung large portions of the population out to dry, criminalized poverty and poor health rather than helped it, and really saw how people embraced the "Me" in America but left the "Us" out of the USA.

Martin Luther King Jr. mastered this as a writing technique. Sometimes it would seem like he was just bringing up several examples that merely reframed what he had just said, but he was actually setting a stage for making a much stronger point. As a writer, I appreciate that kind of style and technique particularly because it doesn't hit you in an obvious manner, but boy does it hit you. So, while acknowledging he did some other things that were pretty important as well, total respect for the writer that Dr. King was.