This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 7, 2011 - As a long-time student and now as a teacher of writing, I sometimes field this question: Can writing really be taught?
I can't say I understand entirely why writing would be any harder to teach than, say, math (which also uses symbols to represent the world around us in descriptive and revealing ways), but I suppose it has something to do with a prevailing notion that writing is "creative" in ways that math isn't. (I have a feeling mathematicians might quibble with this notion.)
Or maybe the can-you-teach-writing question arises from the idea that good writing is born of experience, not study - of hard living, even. That it's something undertaken in privacy, perhaps under the influence of narcotics, probably late at night. That it's something dark, mysterious and unparsable.
Or, at the other end of the spectrum, that writing isn't about having any particular skills; it's something anyone could do if only he or she had a compelling enough story to tell (which I would argue everybody does).
It's true that writing isn't something you know. Writing well isn't a matter of having the right information about writing. Writing is something you do. In the lingo of the field, it's a process. What we can teach, in my experience, are the habits of writing, and the critical faculties necessary to improve upon our work.
Next week, a great teacher of mine, Michelle Latiolais, of the graduate Programs in Writing at the University of California in Irvine, will be coming to St. Louis to speak about writing teachers and students, and to read from her own work.
Her latest book, a collection of short stories called "Widow," has earned Michelle some long-overdue time in the literary spotlight, which brings me to one of the first lessons Michelle taught me: Do not write to earn time in the literary spotlight. Writing well has nothing to do with notoriety.
Lesson No. 2: Writing well has nothing to do with money, either. We should write for reasons more profound and significant than any marketplace can value.
Lesson No. 3: Discipline, in and of itself, is overrated. It's true that writing won't happen without carving out the time to write, and certainly deadlines can be used to a writer's advantage, but if we pay too much attention to our schedules and word counts, something else is likely to get too little.
Lesson No. 4: Writing well is probably going to hurt. For one, the world is full of heartache, and we write, no matter the genre, about living in that world. The world is also full of beauty, a fact that can be equally painful to confront.
Lesson No. 5: Read 50 pages a day from a work of your choosing, not something someone has told you you should read. This liberty is one of our most precious: to be the arbiters of our own taste.
Lesson No. 6: Don't be afraid to stop reading something if you find you've lost the will. Except perhaps in elementary school, there is no prize for making it to the last page.
Lesson No. 7: Whether a reader can "relate to" a piece of writing is not a good indication of its quality. Sometimes writing describes our shared world best by rendering it unfamiliar, unrecognizable even.
Lesson No. 8: Whether a piece of writing is "easy to read" is not a good indication of its quality. Some of the best writing is very, very hard to read, for too many reasons to address here.
Lesson No. 9: Seek criticism, and then be willing to forget it, not because some of it might hurt (see lesson No. 4), but because not all of it will be helpful. The helpful stuff will be the stuff that sticks.
Lesson No. 10: When you find a good reader for your work, someone who helps you to do what you do better than you could do it on your own, hold onto that person. That person is your friend.
In closing, a lesson from Michelle of a different kind: Know how to make a snazzy lunch. Writing may not be about impressing anyone. But lunch? Lunch most certainly is.
Margaux Wexberg Sanchez is a freelance writer who teaches at Fontbonne University.