Comments on: Five Possible Reasons Why We Believe Writing Can’t Be Taught

By: Lars

Lars — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:55:08 +0000

“There are six billion of us hurtling through an infinite and otherwise empty universe on a giant rock, and all of us are going to die. Help me make sense of this. Go.”

By: bets

bets — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:43:15 +0000

I learn about what to say best by reading and talking to my peers, being on and attending industry panels, and more reading and thinking. But you’re right, no one teaches that. It’s just something you’re expected to have. Several bestsellers have proven that it trumps great writing. So how do we teach it, hmm?

By: Dennis Lang

Dennis Lang — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:30:12 +0000

Love this discussion. Never been in a writing class (likely obvious) but other than tearing apart good writing–is this “deconstucting”?–to explore how the meaning, emotion, effect was arrived at and conveyed how can saying “something meaningful” be taught? Doesn’t it presuppose that the writer have something to say in the first place? Then maybe he/she can be helped along to communicate it thoughtfully and powerfully. Come to think of it maybe I’m confusing teaching to say “something meaningful” with teaching to say something “meaningfully.”

By: Lars

Lars — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:08:28 +0000

I would much rather try to teach someone how to say something meaningful than how to put words together as well as Woolf, or Faulkner, or McCarthy, or [insert your favorite author here]. The former is do-able. Not so sure about the latter.

By: Dennis Lang

Dennis Lang — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:15:22 +0000

Okay another cliff- hanger from Professor Cass. Intriguing, but how can you teach “having something to say?”

By: denniscass

denniscass — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:06:03 +0000

@bets: I believe that if it can be learned it can be taught.

Maybe the reason why we don’t believe we can teach the whole “having something to say” part is because we’ve never tried.

By: bets

bets — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:10:11 +0000

I think the term “great writer” can be misleading.

What makes a great writer isn’t how s/he strings words. That can be taught–how to communicate what you want to say. If I’ve learned it, others can learn it.

I think what really makes a great writer is what s/he has to say. I think certain people naturally make connections between ideas and happenings and mold them into stories and essays. Others don’t. I don’t know that such thinking can be taught, but it can be learned.

By: Lars

Lars — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:11:43 +0000

Greg Smith helped me out quite a bit, too. I highly recommend his novel “The Divine Comedy of John Venner.”

Writing is a skill. Like any other skill, it can be taught. Anyone can learn the fundamentals. Anyone can improve. (The workshop may not be the ideal learning model, but that’s a separate issue.)

That doesn’t mean everyone can become a great writer, just like everyone can’t become a great brain surgeon or zookeeper or silversmith.

By: Dennis Lang

Dennis Lang — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:49:12 +0000

I don’t know but I’m thinking writing can’t be taught at least in the conventional way that you might teach me how to fix a fuel injection system. The curiosity, the expressive germ has to be present already doesn’t it? Then, like your experience with professor Smith, the bounds of that expression can be expanded, neural connectors already present get tickled, fired up.

It’s said that Orson Welles spent hundreds of hours watching the films of John Ford before shooting “Citizen Kane”. Now, no one would confuse the “grammar” of Citizen Kane with anything John Ford might have directed, but through that study Welles grasped the fundamentals of a narrative cinematic form, and then ran with it. Visually and structurally the film is derivative of many elements but the resulting synthesis pure Welles.

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:44:20 +0000

That’s a great post, Dennis. I particularly agree with the last one. The more mystery there is, the less accountability. It’s sad, considering that I’ve spent many years outside school learning what I should have been taught had the program been more robust and the concept of teaching writing believed in.