I’m always suspicious of people who profess a mastery of writing. Mastery’s a very slippery term. And when you start spreading that so called mastery around as some sort of writ, rather than a possibility among a multitude of possibilities, well, it becomes a little dangerous.
Teaching writing (at least) is only ever suggesting, I hesitate to use even the term facilitator because it’s less about enabling and more about, well, suggesting. So, yes, that’s about the best descriptor I can find, and if it sounds somewhat uncertain, a little shaky even, well, that’s probably a good thing.
Suggestion is good, because it offers options.
It’s when you start stating “that this is so” and that this is how it’s done to the exclusion of other things (just as I am doing here, by the way) you drift swiftly into perilous territory.
And to say, “well, this is wrong” well then you’re heading into dangerous waters in a boat that is leaking, at an alarming rate, because so much interesting material comes from things that are regarded as wrong, and to wrap things up in a litany of wrong is to be blinded by rules to the beauty that occurs when someone gets it right.
I don’t enjoy everything and you probably don’t either.
And to teach writing I think you at least need to recognize this, otherwise you increase the likelihood of stunting the writing of someone who is getting right what you see as wrong. Which is why I believe teaching must always be approached with humility and care.
We’re all miserable failures in some way. We’re deaf to at least one, though more likely many, aspects of the human story. We’re all grasping in the dark.
If anything, teaching writing is an acknowledgement of that, and at best you can only hope to provide the tools that work for you, in the chance that they might help shine a little light in helping another writer find their way, but not so much that they are in themselves blinding.
Good point, Trent.
You’re a bit like the Guru who says, we know nothing, there for we only suggest!
Not at all. I know plenty, but just because I know it, and want to share it doesn’t mean it’s what other people need to know. It’s about offering experience and interpretation and saying: “this is one way this thing works, but this is only how I see it, you might see it differently.”
And I know my approach can rub people up the wrong way, some people like to codify things and be told this is how it is, this is how this works, these are the rules, tick these boxes and you have a good story – I just tend to find that approach, while comforting, boring. But that’s just me.
I suppose it makes writing fiction sound mysterious when it isn’t – it’s writing down words and making things up.
I was being a trifle facetious, Trent. I should have added a wink.