Moving Beyond Writer Crutches

Eventually, you just have to sit down and write.

Sometimes, I think some aspiring and new authors are more in love with the idea of writing than actually telling the story. Course after course, book after book is touted as the thing that's going to inform their writing aspirations.

Oddly enough, the main options I see recommended repeatedly are often taught by people with no publishing credits to their name. I mean, if you were going to invest in a book or course to learn to write bestselling screenplays wouldn't you want to know the author or instructor had actually sold a screenplay for a healthy sum?

While learning about the process of writing, how to plot, developing strong characters and writing convincing dialogue is important, reading advice will only take you so far. There comes a point where you have to learn through the hard work of actually writing and executing those elements of your story effectively.

I mean, if you're going to hire someone to redo the electric in your house, do you want someone who's rewired a hundred houses, or someone who's simply read a lot of textbooks about how to do this?

With writing, it's a bit like expecting to eat breakfast, lunch, a snack and dinner before needing to go to the bathroom. It's like expecting your system not to digest anything until you've consumed everything.

A lot of novelists start late—Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter. - James M. Cain

 In my opinion, you read a lot and write a lot when you start out. When you hit a snag, let's call it a weakness in your diet, you refer to resources to get some insight on the issue - whether it's plot or character development or how to use semicolons. However, you do not stay entrenched in the feeding process endlessly. You take it back and start applying any insight to your work. That's how you truly learn. When anyone is more invested in a writer's help book or a course, or repeating a course, chances are they're avoiding the real pleasure and pain of actually being a writer and applying what they've learned theoretically.

Are you in love with the idea of writing, or actually telling the story? I have my own 'writer crutch' - a hangup I've let hold me back at times -  although it doesn't fall under this category. (Perhaps I'll share another time.)

The Write Stuff

By Russel D McLean

This week, with thanks to the wondrous Scottish novelist, Kirsten McKenzie, I attended a writing class as a “visiting speaker” or some such thing. Basically I went in and answered a lot of questions. It was informal. And it was fun. Lots of great questions.

But one in particular stuck with me above all the rest.

“Are classes like this worthwhile if you want to write?”

I admit I was stymied by the question. Because I couldn’t say yes considering I’d never attended a writing class, never been part of a writer’s circle (at least for long) and had never really advised anyone to do so. And yet I couldn’t condemn courses because, here I was, talking to one, trying to help these people.

In the end I think that the question is perhaps a moot one. Writing classes are perhaps only useful if you find them useful. They cannot make you a writer. But nothing in the world can except for luck, perseverance and a tiny amount of natural ability. But that’s not to say you shouldn’t do everything you can to make learn the craft.

For some people, like me, that’s all about immersing yourself in literature, in learning through doing, in making mistakes on your own terms. If you’re like me – that is, if you’re a grouchy hermit-type – then a writing probably isn’t for you.

But if you need structure, routine and support, then I think writing classes can be incredibly useful and productive environments. And sometimes they can even help you if you’re on your way in the craft, too. One writer I know is doing a course simply so they can teach and has been discovering all kinds of truths they had never been able to get to before simply through the rigours of the learning process. That’s great, and it’s done a huge amount for them.

But it’s one individual case.

I think I said it to the class multiple times, but the truth is that when it comes to writing and publishing – hell, just about any art form – nobody knows anything. Or, to put it in the words of one of the 20th Centuries greatest unknown poets*

What might be right for you might not be right for some

It sounds like a cop out of an answer of course. And maybe it is. But the fact is that writing is a very strange business to be in. And especially fiction writing. There is no one tried and true route to success. Everyone’s experience varies wildly.

And that’s part of the joy of writing and the reason I love it. Every writer I meet has their own take on the business, their own utterly unique war stories that couldn’t have happened to anyone else. They all come from different backgrounds. And I think the only thing I could to back up my non-answer to the question is this.

Ask each of them whether a writing course is worth while.

And see the number of different, conflicting and plain crazy making answers that come flooding back.



*The dude who wrote the Diff’rent Strokes theme