I TOOK A COURSE
And Now I Can Write
Writing is an art form. Either you can do it, or you can't. But you can't teach people how to do it.
Well...it depends upon what you mean by writing.
If you think that writing is the manipulation of words, that a good writer is a wordsmith, then you're in trouble. You have a better chance of learning how to rearrange leaves on a pear tree.
If, on the other hand, you realize that writing is the expression of ideas, and that words are just tools, then you're closer to the truth about writing.
And yes, some aspects of it can be taught. At least the mechanics, including basic forms of communication, but probably not the art of it. (Unless, of course, you’re a naturally talented writer who just has to learn the techniques, to bring out the art.)
What can't always be taught are certain facets of thinking -- specifically the ability to generate really new and original concepts.
No, not creating. Creating, or being creative, is something everybody seems to aspire to, as if there weren't enough problems in the world. Ad agencies have creative directors, and help wanted ads for public relations people ask that they be creative, and to be thought to be not creative is tantamount to being called stupid. The drive to create probably generates more word clutter than a runaway laser printer.
The problem is that too much is called creative that's really nothing more than a good memory of what somebody else thought up before. Memories of a distant past summon up the recall of an individual responsible for coming up with promotional ideas. He resided in his self-perception of his own creativity. But all he was capable of doing was remembering and resuscitating old ideas.
A good writer is one who brings a newness, a freshness, an imaginativeness to paper. That's the part that probably can't be taught. (Who knows? Maybe someday somebody will learn how to teach it.) How new? How fresh? How imaginative? It can't be quantified. On a high aesthetic plane, writers like Dickens were presumed to be vulgar in their time, and now survive as artists. Who knows what the ages will nurture, sustain and perceive?
Part of the problem is that fine writing requires more than what we commonly think of as creative. It requires risk, and the courage and ability to make choices and (or abandon) to take risks. These functions can't generally be taught. The good writer must choose constantly. Which thought comes first? Which mode of expression is most likely to succeed? Ultimately, which words, in what configuration, best offer the greatest clarity of expression?
The risk comes in the choice of voice and expression. How far shall I go? Can I use this form of expression? Will humor really work? Will irony communicate? Will emotion -- or even passion -- help to make a point? Good writing -- or at least, thoughtful writing, entails a great deal of that kind of risk.
Risk and choice, incidentally, are probably what make up what we call style, which is why style is not likely capable of being taught. The risks you take, and the choices you make, result in a style of writing. But the operative word here is result. You can't arbitrarily choose a style going in, and have it amount to anything.
A good writing course may teach you that choices have to be made, and that risk must be taken, but isn't likely to do very well in teaching you how to make choices and take risks. And choices and risks are inherent in every form of writing, including interdepartmental memos.
You can, however, learn the structure. You can, if you're smart and well motivated, learn how to use the language with facility, so that none of your ideas languish in obscurity. You can learn format. You can learn some basic guidelines (we tend not to use the word rules in THE MARCUS LETTER) that will help. You can learn, for example, the mechanics of writing a sound press release, but you need instinct, experience and skill to write the press release that gets printed.
A good course on writing will teach you how to look at a writing problem in terms of the ideas to be expressed, rather than the formal arrangement of words. How do you look at an idea to find its central point? How do you break an idea into its components, and organize those components in the order that most effectively and cohesively projects that idea to others?
A good writing course will teach you how to use the language skills you already have to communicate those ideas more effectively. If you were to learn just a smattering of what's in a book like Strunk & White's The Elements of Style you'd be miles ahead. (If you need a course in grammar, take that first, but separately. Don't get it confused with writing.)
Much of writing courses these days seem to be devoted to overcoming something called writer's block. For those who have never experienced it, it's hard to imagine. There's such a thing as staring unknowingly at a page because you don't know what to say, or you don't know how to deal with the format (of a release or a speech, for example), but that's not a psychological block against writing. There's such a thing as not writing because you're afraid of being misunderstood, but that's larger than a block against writing. If you're properly schooled in organizing your thinking, and in the basic skills of communication, then sitting down to write is not the creative (that word again) act that scares people, it's the performance of a task, like chopping firewood.
What it boils down to is that you may not be able to learn how to play the piano after the appendix operation if you didn't know how to do it before the operation. A writing course won't give you talent or artistry that you don't have naturally. It will give you useful mechanics.
Don't knock useful mechanics. It's all that writers -- even the best -- start out with. You write the best novel you can. If you win a Pulitzer or even a Nobel, you'll never know how you did it beyond the mechanics.
But a good course will indeed teach you those mechanics well enough to communicate clearly, intelligently, lucidly, effectively, and perhaps even gracefully. Yes, that can frequently be taught. No, not everybody can learn to the same degree of proficiency. But not everybody can learn to bat .300, either.
Know, too, that there are differences in writing for different media. There’s a vast difference, for example, between writing an article and writing a book. An article is meant to convey one idea. A book has sustaining power, and must be more meticulously written, with a logic that carries over a larger distance than in an article. Great non-fiction writers can – and often are – bad fiction writers. I’ve written brochures and I’ve written elaborate website content, and both require different approaches and different styles.
Should people who are not professionally reclusive, or who haven't taken a vow of silence (or perhaps a vow of sulking) bother to take a course or two from a really qualified instructor? Absolutely. In fact, for the sake of all the readers of the world, it should probably be mandatory. A professional who can’t communicate clearly isn’t a very good professional, no matter how much law or accounting lurks in the background. The word for that kind of person is hack, which nobody wants to be.
Nobody has to be, either.