(I’m piggybacking on the conversation started at John Walker’s blog and continued by Greg. This is essentially the same comment I dropped in Greg’s thread.)

So someone doesn’t think making songs qualifies as writing.  Well, what is writing? I’m no authority and won’t define writing here, but lets unpack this a little.

One doesn't have to be religious to understand that the oft-quoted Old Testament book of Psalms, which are short songs or hymns, sit amongst the oldest and most studied examples of writing in western tradition. Even if someone took the position that the Psalms are crap and useless today, he couldn't deny that it is writing and literature.

Furthermore, even after writing became popular, most of the population (like +90%) was illiterate. Oral traditions were dominant for so long and the way people remembered much of what was transmitted orally was to put the information into poetry or song because it makes it easier to remember. Why is it easier today for some to remember song lyrics than something they've read dozens of times?  Perhaps their ancestors were those who transmitted the oral tradition of the community?

"Writing" in the sense that we know it today is a very modern concept and 20% of the world is still illiterate. Socrates and dozens of the other “greats” didn't leave behind one single written word; much of the literature and thought we read from history was first an oral tradition and then transferred by someone else onto parchment years later.

Even Shakespeare reworked stories from oral tradition - spread via minstrel - into the the foundation of his greatest plays. Shakespeare, incidentally, never wrote for public consumption and none of his plays were published in his lifetime. His scripts were seen only by his theater company.

Clearly "writing", as in creating and transmitting ideas through linguistic communications, has always been evolving; but as the word gains meaning, it doesn’t lose its old meaning (see above, Psalms). When we ask when an old text was "written", are we asking when it was composed and conceived, or when it became codified on a tablet, lambskin, or scroll? 

Moreover, if we wanted to be UBER -pedantic about this issue, none of us here on Open Salon are "writing" anything, as "writing" requires a pen-like instrument and paper (or something resembling paper). We aren't "writing" so much as "typing". So from now on, no one here can consider themselves writers until they submit all materials in handwritten form. Otherwise, we are all mere typists.

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I know I'm preaching to the choir. Additional examples and dissent welcome.

Photo by craft*ology used under Creative Commons.