Self-help books abound in any genre, be it gardening, speaking or catfish farming, but they are especially prevalent in the school of writing. Books on how to write novels, how to publish that non-fiction memoir, how to make millions of dollars writing, how to outdo Proust and Eliot and the like.
Some published authors write whole books on the subject, like Stephen King’s “On Writing.” Some acclaimed authors forgo the books but come up with their own rules of writing. Jack Kerouac had a list, “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose” though honestly a lot of them are oblique (“6. Be crazy dumbsaint of mind”) or better life advice than anything else (“3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house”). Kurt Vonnegut came up with a list late in his career, although he ended it by saying great writers break every rule except number one: “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”
Finally, creative writing programs are common at most universities, including this one. You can declare an English major oriented towards creative writing. You can even get a Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing. And naturally, these courses are intended towards the teaching and improvement of writers.
The point here is that people really want to be told how to write. They want to unlock what it takes to be a writer and run with it and they want to do it by the book. They want the formula for success, a formula anyone can follow. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Creative writing classes, writing rules or self-help novels will not turn you into a writer. People don’t just become writers.
In many ways, I have no right to lecture on this. I mean, I write, right? I have a column in a newspaper. If I’m no good, then at least I’m competent enough to chip in 500 odd words every Friday for your reading pleasure. How did I learn then? How come I’ve got what it takes?
But even if I’ve “got what it takes,” it’s not everything, if hardly anything. Really. I don’t feel particularly proud of my writing. I don’t awake with my eyes aflame from sheer potential. I mostly care whether it’s legible and (semi) coherent. And it’s not like I think I’m a bad writer or a fraudulent writer; I just don’t feel like a brilliant one.
And I don’t think that’s my end goal. Personally I feel like if I ever thought I was profound and brilliant, then I’m doing something wrong. Because after a certain point, you need to be able to step back from everything you know, everything you’ve been taught, and understand: this will never get easier.
I’ll defer to Sinclair Lewis briefly, who once said, “Writing is just work.” Simple advice, it doesn’t seem to conflict with the classes or the self-help books either: that with enough work someone can become a writer. But there is another side to the quote. Yes, writing is work, but the other, perhaps more relevant message is that writing stays work. No matter how gifted you or anyone else thinks you are, no matter how many rules you follow or break, no matter how many Masters degrees you earn, it will never stop being work.
In short: while courses and books can’t make you a writer, and sheer intuition/talent won’t either, that’s not what it’s about. Ideally, either can compensate a deficit in the other, but being a good (or even just competent) writer means staying a writer and working at it as much as you can. Ultimately you can’t use anything as a crutch. You have to learn to walk without it.
Think Sean needs some new writing rules? E-mail him at sreichard@wisc.edu.
