Magical Musings

Can Writing be Taught and Why I Think That’s the Wrong Question.

Carolyn Jewel

I did a little Googling around on the question Can Writing be Taught. Here’s a few of the top results (by the way, most of the essays are titled Can Writing be Taught? I just find that interesting, that’s all):

• Tod Goldberg
• The Atlantic – So you Want to be a writer
• Meg Gardiner
• The Elegant Variation

These are all very thoughtful and interesting articles, but sheesh! Is there a snobbier endeavor than writing anywhere in the universe? Writing is a higher calling and mere mortals need not apply. Writers sit in their lonely rooms pouring heart and soul onto the page to produce pearls and diamonds. Teach someone to write? It is to laugh, says the genius in his ivory tower.

Indeed, pity the fool who thinks she can be taught to write. This is an exclusive club, buster, and if you can’t already, you probably won’t ever. If you happen to write (gasp!!) genre fiction prepare to be sneered at. If you write Romance, well, sorry, you’re going to hell. Romance, as everyone who’s never read a Romance knows, is singlehandedly responsible for the decline in Literature the world over.

Now that I have that off my chest, on to the actual topic at hand. Can Writing be Taught? Hmm. You start First Grade more or less unable to write. By the end of 12th grade, you’ve written your share of essays that other people can read. So yes, writing can be taught. As we see in all endeavors in life, there are ranges of ability and desire. But, quite plainly, writing can be taught.

I’m sure you’ve all spotted the disconnect between the question and what the people who ask this question mean. The many writings on the subject make the subtext abundantly clear.

Just to be clear, let’s define a few terms so we start this discussion from the same place. I think we can generally agree that the nuts and bolts of writing can be taught. Grammar, punctuation, the meaning of words can all be taught. Likewise, the concepts of story structure, pacing, characterization and so on can be taught.

When the question Can Writing be Taught gets asked, they (the infamous they who are not us) aren’t talking about the nuts and bolts of writing. There’s something more embedded in the question, which is really whether William Faulkner, for example, could have been taught to be Faulkner – writ large. Well, no, and we all know that. One William Faulkner was quite enough, thank you, and what he did was unique to man he was.

There’s a worthiness measurement in that question I’d like to acknowledge up front. Not, Can Writing be Taught, but can someone be taught to write well enough to be published? What they’re really asking is what are the chances that with, say, 35 students in a writing class, the teacher will impart to any one of them the ability to write Absolom! Absolom! by the end of the course? Pretty damn slim, I’d say. Brilliance and talent belongs to the individual. Faulkner’s genius is not the genius of, say, Toni Morrison. My particular talent for writing, such as it is, isn’t the same as yours.

For writers, the question Can Writing be Taught envisions a book as the end result of the teaching of writing question. A story. A tale that others might one day pluck off a shelf or download to their reading device of choice. And be transported by the words of the story. Can that kind of writing be taught? To which I reply, who cares?

That’s the wrong question for a writer to care about.

A teacher, of course, cares whether writing can be taught. She’s going to try to teach it, after all, and would like (so I think) for her students to do well. For the individual student in my now hypothetical class, however, that question — Can Writing be Taught? — is useless and counterproductive. Dangerously so, as a matter of fact.

For the student who wants to write, the question shouldn’t be Can Writing be Taught? That question turns the student into a passive receptacle. Teach me, it says. Show me the secret handshake. Give me the rules to memorize so that I can write Lord Of Scoundrels like Loretta Chase. If at the end of the course you have not written Absolom! Absolom! or Lord Of Scoundrels then what’s the problem?

Did the teacher fail to teach? Did she refuse to show you the real rules? Did he, after all, deny you the secret handshake? Why, after slavishly removing all dialogue tags except “said” did some other writer land a three book contract for a story full of “, he growled.” and ” , she rasped gruffly.”?

Perhaps the student needs to take another class with a more generous teacher willing to stuff him full of ever more nuts and bolts. Perhaps that student believes, having duly applied the rules and concepts she was taught, that what she’s written must be worthy and, therefore, all ensuing rejections must be unfair. Surely, so.

Maybe.

Probably not.

Consider this: did she sit in that class waiting to be taught? Or did she do something else along the way? There is, of course, the hopeless case of the writer who refuses to be taught, but that’s a different essay and I suspect that none of those people are reading websites like this one. Set that writer aside for now. I want to focus on the person who actually cares about the original question and the answer to it. The people who are likely readers of this website. Yeah, I’m talking to you.

For those writers, the question that matters more is Can I Learn to Write? Please note, the question isn’t Can someone else learn to write?. It is immaterial what the student next to you can and cannot do. Same goes for the writer sitting at some other computer. He isn’t writing your book. You are. What matters is whether you can learn. Can you? That question is intensely personal and the answer is in your control. Writers who end up published, William Faulkner included, have worked hard at their writing. They learned to write.

What are you willing to do? How much time are you willing to spend learning? How much of yourself are you willing to put into the endeavor? Are you going to blow through someone’s draft chapter one and not spend much, if any, time analyzing what works and what doesn’t? When someone takes the time to respond to your draft novel are you going to shut up and listen (or read) or are you going to be defensive or dismissive because someone didn’t get what you meant? Will you set aside the pain of criticism and take in what’s being said? Will you pick out the parts that resonate so painfully true and then sit down and work out how to address the problem? What will you do with the teaching you receive?

This is important: A writer whose technical skills are currently on the weaker side can — and often does — correctly point out that your story takes too long to get started.

If you want to write, commit yourself to learning.

You do not have to learn alone. In fact, I think it’s extremely helpful if you spend at least some time letting experienced writers and teachers teach you. But you must do more. Take what you are taught and turn it inside out. Examine the teaching as it applies to your words. All at the same time accept, reject, question, try, adapt and absorb. Be on the lookout for anything that will help you understand something new, something more about the very complex beast that makes up a story.

If you do that, all of it, if you tear apart everything you are taught and learn until it’s a part of you, if you remain open to new approaches, and personally reinvent the wheel, you will come out at the end knowing about your writing.

When a teacher says, adjectives are bad do you go through your MS and delete them all? Is that Mission Accomplished for you? What happens if instead you go through your MS, delete the adjectives and study the result? What happened to the words afterward? In what way is the writing now better, worse or unchanged? Why? Explain it to yourself. Teach yourself. Learn it on your own.

I am not, believe me, suggesting that learning to write means doing it on your own without assistance or guidance. Why struggle alone when you don’t have to? A good teacher will direct you, show you relationships you didn’t suspect, help you understand, give you a way of looking at words, characters, story structure and all the elements of craft. Take shameless advantage wherever and whenever you can.

With apologies (sort of ) to Virginia Woolf, that room of your own exists at least partly in your head. Use it. Better yet, inhabit that room and make it your own.

Carolyn Jewel is the author of historical and paranormal romance novels. Her latest paranormal romance, My Forbidden Desire, is out this month from Grand Central Publishing. You can find out more about her and her books on her website.