I love the self-taught writer
“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” – Flannery O’Connor
I subscribe to several writer’s magazines and occasionally find an article I like. I like articles that make suggestions, start people thinking on their own, send aspiring writers off to their keyboards where they just go for it.
I made my worst grades in high school and college English classes because, (a) I already spoke English and didn’t know why I needed a course in my native language, and (b) When it came to writing–and worse yet, to reading–the teachers and the textbooks strayed far outside the boundaries of suggestion.
I balk at rules. Suggestions, though, are like writing prompts. (“A man walks into a bar, orders a glass of milk, and the bartender kills him.”) With a prompt or a suggestion, the sky’s the limit. With a rule, the creative person is stuck more or less in a coffin with no place to go. When you ignore the rules, your grade suffers, even when you do it well.
“Write an analysis of this classic book, discussing the symbolism I’ve already told you is it it,” the teacher tells us. Screw that. I’ll tell you what I see in the book, not what you see in it or what the author of our anthology of excerpts (complete with non-transparent discussion questions) sees in it. The book = me + the words. That’s it. You (the teacher) are not there. When the teacher doesn’t find his belief system in your term paper, your grade suffers, and woe be unto you if your belief systems makes more sense to the teacher than his or her own.
When I look through a writer’s magazine for suggestions, I stumble over dozens of advertisements for MFA programs with long lists of regular and visiting faculty members who will help “you” become a better writer. I don’t think this is possible and that what really happens is those who don’t want to write get properly stifled and that those who do only listen to the lectures and critiques and discussions to hear what fits the philosophy of writing they have before they walk in the door.
When kids are free do go outside and simply play, they come up with amazing things as they follow their whims and their imaginations and their feelings of that moment. This is how I visualize writers in the process of teaching themselves. They follow the intuition they have right now, rather than being given a list of literary terms and styles to use in a writing assignment. Unfettered is where our best work arises.
My opinion, to be sure. But try it (that’s a suggestion and not an order). In fact, this entire post is biased because it represents what I like. . .reading what I love, experimenting with stuff, and seeing what happens. Others may like short story instructors to say “today we’re using irony” and poetry instructors who say “today we’re using enjambment.”
It’s not that I think we should legislate against English classes for English speakers and creative writing classes for people who want to write creatively or even against running a Master of Fine Arts degree for people who want some resume material. We might see better books if we did that, but somehow, there’s something uncomfortably authoritarian about ridding ourselves of those who want to force rules upon us with yet another rule. So, we’re stuck with it, being chained to a system for writing freely.
Philosopher Denis Diderot purportedly said, “Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest.” I’ve liked that statement ever since I first heard it in nursery school or kindergarten. A word of warning, if you play with that statement, substituting other professions into it, it’s best not to write a theme in English class that attempts to prove the truth of the argument that “We should strangle the last creative writing instructor with the guts of the last English handbook author.” It seemed funny at the time, but my teacher took it personally, which is what I intended while proclaiming that I was speaking, well, philosophically with a touch of irony.
Basically, I believe that if a person wants to write poems, short stories and novels, they should get on with it, run them up the flagpole, and see what people think. If nobody gets it, perhaps they need work. Well, writing is always work, so that’s win-win for everyone. As writers, I think we flourish when we put out moments of free play down on the page.
–Malcolm
Comments are closed.
Well said. As long as people are tied to social media and their cell phones imagination suffers. New writers today may only know a brevity code instead of a language.
Texts and tweets probably don’t help us much.
Yes to all of this. In my freshman year of high school, I was assigned to the class of a teacher who would initially infuriate me and later become a fine mentor. I’ve mentioned him before on many occasions because his impact was truly life-changing. He began the semester by assigning an essay. When I got mine back, there were red marks and notations all over it and a big red C at the top. I’d seen Cs before, but never next to my name. After class, I approached his desk. Holding my paper, I said, “There must be some mistake.”
He assured me the grade was correct and then continued to tell me that it was indeed a perfectly fine, well-written paper. He said for another student, it very well might have earned an A. I went from angry to infuriated and said some nonsense about injustice. He scoffed, which did nothing to make me like him more. He told me he made a point to familiarize himself with incoming students before the first day of class. He knew me, he said. I snorted. Then he proceeded to perfectly describe my academic history until that point. “You get straight As. Teachers have always loved you and have showered you with praise. Everything comes easy for you. So easy you barely have to try.” He pointed to the paper I’d set on his desk. “And even though you had a week, you wrote that last night in less than 20 minutes.”
Well, um. Yeah. He made it clear that if I were to get an A from him, I’d have to earn it. I stormed off, but then worked my ass off for the very first time ever.
He was rogue teacher. He demanded we learn the rules, then told us not to take them too seriously. He prioritized whimsy over sentence structure and free thinking over regurgitating someone else’s ideas. He had us examine our beliefs, question them, and redefine them to reflect ourselves more than those who’d passed them on to us.
He was wonderful. When the semester ended, I signed up for another of his classes and by the time I graduated, I’d taken every class the man taught. I didn’t always get the perfect grades I’d been accustomed to, but my time in his classes was the only real education I ever got in school.
Sometimes we find a good one, even if s/he pisses us off. I’ve mentioned my favorite teacher before. He taught creative writing in college before he won a Pulitzer for fiction. He suggested that we find ourselves, our voices, our styles, and our stories. We discussed what we wrote for the class with students chiming in as often as he did. That teacher, like the one you mention, reminded me that writing ideas can be shared in a classroom.
I wish those teachers weren’t so rare.
Oh, and I love your last paragraph. I miss heading up the blogging group I ran for a fistful of years. There were seasoned, well-published members and there were those who were terrified to put their fingers on their keyboards. Scared to expose themselves–their thoughts and their sometimes stumbling efforts to express them. But the supportive community birthed courage and almost without exception, writers emerged everywhere. When I retire and my time is freer, I will absolutely restart the group.
Just as long as you have time for your own writing.
Yes. It’s waited a long time to be at the top of the list and I don’t intend to disappoint it.
🙂