Tooth-skinningly on the fly | Which biscuits I ate today

??So, this week this article about ?whether or not writing can be taught? was featured on WordPress?s hey-look-what-some-literate-randomers-just-wrote page. I meant to write a reply to it while it was still up there, basically in order to put a link to it helpfully on the page itself thus piggybacking off its five minutes of fame to hopefully harvest a few more readers (what? If I can demonstrate a following I stand a better chance of getting published), but sadly this week was a lot like most of my other weeks*, and there was not time.
?? Nonetheless, I think my point is actually a fair one:

?? An awful lot of bloggers seem to spend an awful lot of time agonising over whether creative writing courses are a good idea, based on deeper agonisng over Whether Writing Can Be Taught. Now, personally, I don?t really buy the idea of creative writing classes because, as I hope to discuss next week, I think there are better ways for a writer to learn, but hey, people learn in lots of different ways and need to learn different things. Which brings me neatly to the main thrust of my post: ?Can Writing Be Taught? is an utterly ridiculous way of framing the question.
?? So, realistically, it?s unlikely that anyone is going to sit down and produce a publishable, readable, glaring-flaw-less piece of work straight out of the gate. We all accept that it?s a good idea to send work ?round a load of people we trust to tell it how it is before it goes anywhere near an agent or a publisher; it?s widely known that if one of those resplendent beings does take on a piece of work, they will suggest/request/require changes; it is, one can only assume, basically understood that the author will learn from this guided experience. Likewise, we all accept, I trust, that a person could have a style so unconventionally dynamic, evocative and readable that writing in a completely ungrammatical, rule-defying way could work for them as well or better than learning the ?rules? of written language, but that most people will not be able to write anything readable unless they?ve at least read enough to know how stories/whatever normally work, and had some manner of primary education conveying the basics of grammar and punctuation: even to break the rules effectively it helps to know how they work.
?? In short, I?m pretty sure every writer can benefit from some form of constructive criticism and imparted experience, and thus that regardless of whether Creative Writing classes are the medium for this, writing is taught, every day.
??Now, in my current bill-paying job, I work with young adults who have various issues meaning they can?t carry out the basic things that society generally expects, ranging from following instructions to not attempting to eat the furniture. My job, that of my coworkers and those of various I can only hope more qualified professionals, revolve around various aspects of trying to teach these people to do things that the rest of us were also strictly speaking taught but picked up without having to be specifically trained in them. To some of them, realistically, we can teach none of these things; to some we can teach some things to varying degrees; some, with some help, can learn enough that they can to a greater or lesser extent get by in the grim shower of arses that society can be if one doesn?t quite get it.**
?? It would not be possible to teach any of these people to write.
?? Obviously, the people I work with are the extreme end of the spectrum of skill-learning abilities for basically all skills, but every skill, from understanding basic body language to playing the church organ, arranges the entire population along a spectrum from ?can learn to do this consummately well just from being given the basic tools to so do? to ?will never be able to do this, trying how hard soever?. And for any skill, basically no-one is actually at one of the ends. We all exist somewhere in the middle range somewhere between ?can learn to do this to some recognisable extent if taught in a way exactly corresponding to one?s method of learning, but probably never will, as will never discover that exact method of learning, or, frankly, give a damn enough to try? and ?with minimal input and occasional guidance, will pick this up effortlessly enough to manipulate and innovate, and, if taught in a way that corresponds to their method of learning, will achieve even more?.
?? Writing is no different to any other skill-set. Anyone can be taught, if taught in the right way, to write something creative. Beyond all doubt, there are people at various points along the various spectra involved who have natural ability with some aspects of writing and once taught, in the way they can best learn, how to do the things they don?t find so easy, will be good enough to be published. Probably, the way some of these people can best learn is through the way some particular teacher of creative writing teaches it.

?? But all that means is that any given aspiring writer needs to find the means to best learn their trade, in the process slowly and painfully discovering whether they can learn it well enough. Which, surely to God, guys, was self-evident?

*That is to say, a large number of unnecessarily strange and unpleasant things happened to myself and those around me, but in fairness even on a good week I don?t have a lot of time.

?? Strictly speaking, my job revolves around ensuring they don?t die in the night, wreck the house or wake up to a house that hasn?t been cleaned, my sole contribution to education per se being to wake one dude up in time for him to get to his college (which he likes about as much as your average 18yr-old, and, having learned for himself pretty damn thoroughly that I cannot restrain or punish him, generally finds some way to exact painful vengeance). But why spoil such a lovely flight of rhetoric?

??In June 2009, Jay White Graduated from St John's College, Cambridge, with a BA in English and waist-length curly hair. In September 2009, Jay White moved to Leeds, West Yorkshire, with a buzzcut and one thousand pounds Sterling, courtesy of a man called David who makes wigs, and, two hundred miles thus distant from the nearest acquaintance or distraction, used the hair-money to rent a room and ate entirely out of supermarket skips for the four months it took to find a job offering the necessary working hours to devote three days per week entirely to the writing of a novel. ????More about Jay White, the novel, and the general chaos that is the life of the novelist can be found here. ??Jay White was born in Swindon, in 1987, and is doing well not to be supporting a teenage family, to say nothing of actually making it out of Wiltshire and writing a novel.

Source: http://jaytrieshard.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/tooth-skinningly-on-the-fly/

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