The Word Cloud

SO, are we born with a gift to weave magic with words, paint pictures with prose OR can we be taught the craft of writing - taught in such a way that we can write whole books that will keep readers rivetted, salivating for more ?

I've always assumed a craft, by its very nature, could be taught. As opposed to something that is simply a matter of raw talent, which can be improved on but never learnt from scratch. I would see writing as a craft, but painting and singing as a matter of having an innate ability. For example, I can't sing a note, and never will.

I'm always told to read.
If I want to write then I have to read.
Read my genre,
Read my style,
Read, read, read.
I presumed that was so I could learn...
Or maybe someone is trying to tell me something... he he he.

(And am I the only person guilty of the newbies arrogance;
"but I don't want to write like them. I want to be me! I want to be unique!" )

Is it possible that what one person considers "interesting" and "worthy of note" may be to writing what "tone-deaf" is to singing...?
If so, no the black art of writing cannot, therefore, be learned.

Always on the hunt for an easier way, I had pinned all my hopes on osmosis...

Ez

I’ve always thought that, similar to people who have an ear for music and can sense what works and what doesn’t, the best writers have a natural ability with words, sentence structure and the building of stories. You can teach to an extent, I believe, but only so far.

I'd reverse the sentiment, Andy, and say that yes, it can be taught, but you have to have something to start with. In just about every area of life, we can get better at things with practice, with training, with clear critical facilities - but there has to be a seed there to nurture, and the will to learn. In the absence of either of those, there's no hope. I'd guess that the vast majority of the populace DO have the seed (like most people aren't actually tone deaf), but whether they have the application to persevere with it, is another thing.
Whisks

Andy,
Natural ability is the quickest, shortest path to success, true, but with practice could the right pupil (and teacher) and the right mentality make the grade? (please, please, please say yes...!)

Whisks,
It's interesting you put it that way, because I think you have touched on one of the few things that I believe cannot be taught; perseverence.

A seed to nurture?
Is it possible not to have such a seed?
I believe it is possible not to recognise a suitable seed, but not to have something of note... wow, what a sad person.

Ez

"Nothing can take the place of Perseverance. Talent will not; Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Perseverance and Determination alone are omnipotent." -Calvin Coolidge.

Not that I agree with him, mind!

I agree with what Whisks has said - but must add this - I feel to become an artist ( a musician, a painter, a writer...) there must be compulsion as well as perserverance.The person must be utterly compelled, be driven, to create - to dive into their inner worlds , to scrutinise and question their outer worlds, to communicate these observations and sentiments to others.
Now here comes the rub - some of these people ( like me ) do not really have gift but I do have the compulsion . I also have the perseverance. I also like to think I can recognise good writing. Consequently I like to cling to the idea that I can be taught how to write well ( maybe not brilliantly but well) by reading as many diverse works and asking myself why they do or dont work, by listening to others who either have the gift or who have honed their skills...yes, I do believe that good writing is both an art and a craft and if there is that compulsion then we can do much to improve our skills.
What happens to people like me ? If we work very hard we may produce one or ( at the very most) two good works in our lifetime. How I envy those gifted souls tha thave the perserverance and the discipline and produce a dozen great works ( there's a difference between good and great in my opinion) in the same time that I am taking to get just one acceptable novel out
Back to the grindstone !

Ez,
Just because someone (IMHO) might not have a sturdy seed for writing, doesn't mean they don't have something of note.
There are plenty of people around, for instance, who don't have much imagination, don't read books, don't wonder "what if?", don't question much, don't want to touch the world. Yet they have other skills, equally valid and perhaps more necessary to our group survival - things like contentment with their lot, patience with repetetive tasks, endurance of the mundane, high boredom levels for things that need to be done, even enjoyment of drivel television and housework. Different things stimulate different people. My point is that if there isn't a seed for a particular quality, then it won't be stimulated.
I don't mean this to sound snobby at all - we all have our strengths and weaknesses; the makings of a writer might not be in everybody, but does that matter?
I don't feel that I have the seed for running a nursery school, climbing mountains, winning Miss World or doing Alan Sugar's job - but I don't feel sad - I feel my skills are in other areas. Now if you tell me that they aren't in writing, then I WILL be very, very sad.

P.S. I feel that very very few people at naturally gifted enough that they wouldn't benefit from training. Many of us had piano lessons, but only Mozart composed great pieces when he was six. For the rest of us, it's a question of relentless arpeggios and scales, before we're close to those heady heights.

P.P.S. It's a jolly good thing, if you ask me, that there aren't more writers about - think of the competition!

P.P.P.S. I'm not necessarily right btw - these are just my humble thoughts.

Can you teach a child to paint by numbers? If so, you can teach a child to write.

That said, can you teach a child how to hold a readers attention in the palm of their hand, riveted on their every word? Can you show him/her how to take their readers imagination and fling it in the air, allowing it to revel in the freedom of flight before you bring it crashing to the ground, crushing all its hopes and dreams underfoot? I'm not so sure.

I could teach my son to play guitar but he will never be Jimi Hendrix. Not even close, not unless he is really, really dedicated and more to the point, lucky. I think you can be taught almost anything to the level of competency. Beyond that requires a modicum of talent, whether it be aspirational or congenital. I don't think you can hope to compete with the best without it.

AW

P.S. I aspire to competency. I may accept adequacy instead.

On the 'can you teach a child to paint' theme - this is interesting. Have you ever seenthe works of Betty Edwards an American art teacher who took several people off the street - people who claimed they could not draw - and in three months got them not just drawing but ( in many - not all - cases) producing some truly excellent work ? It is a life changing book because it shows us ( by bringing attention to how our brains work and the role of the right brain in accessing our creativity) that most people are a heck of alot more 'talented' than they are led to believe...
But, yes, AW, when it comes to brilliance I do agree. And not all people who can draw well are able to paint...although exceptional painting does demand a certain amount of really good drawing skills...

"Nothing can take the place of Perseverance. Talent will not; Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Perseverance and Determination alone are omnipotent." -Calvin Coolidge.

OMG! I have that exact quote on my wall! Brilliant! I also have a "Perseverence = success" poster I created (trying to put a positive spin the phrase "You do not fail until you give up." :o)

I agree with what Whisks has said - but must add this - I feel to become an artist ( a musician, a painter, a writer...) there must be compulsion as well as perserverance.The person must be utterly compelled, be driven, to create - to dive into their inner worlds , to scrutinise and question their outer worlds, to communicate these observations and sentiments to others.

Ouch!
Help! I don't have compulsion!
I love writing, I love the creativity but it isn't a compulsion.
:o(
I would say I have desire but not compulsion.

Now here comes the rub - some of these people ( like me ) do not really have gift but I do have the compulsion . I also have the perseverance. I also like to think I can recognise good writing. Consequently I like to cling to the idea that I can be taught how to write well ( maybe not brilliantly but well) by reading as many diverse works and asking myself why they do or dont work, by listening to others who either have the gift or who have honed their skills...yes, I do believe that good writing is both an art and a craft and if there is that compulsion then we can do much to improve our skills.
What happens to people like me ? If we work very hard we may produce one or ( at the very most) two good works in our lifetime. How I envy those gifted souls tha thave the perserverance and the discipline and produce a dozen great works ( there's a difference between good and great in my opinion) in the same time that I am taking to get just one acceptable novel out
Back to the grindstone !

Sorry to be rude, but; Garbage. With a capital "G"...
I have seen your work and it is brilliant.
On the long path that is the art of writing, I can see you, way ahead, near the horizon.
It is to you that I look for lessons.
;o)

Ez.

My wife is an artist, she has sold quite a few paintings now having taken up her easel and brushes again in the last year or so. She is the first to admit that art is incredibly subjective. I agree that the written word is also subjective but I would argue that it is less so (unless we are discussing poetry I suppose) than art.

I recall a programme on TV (that's life?) that took several small children and allowed them access to oil paints in profusion. The paintings that they made looked like the results of an explosion in a paint factory and yet, when hung on the walls of a famous art gallery, were met with appreciative ooh's and ahh's from so-called art critics. They went further, expounding on the thought processes depicted by the riot of paint and discussing the underlying meaning of each work. They valued the pieces highly. Nothing wrong with that if you are the child's mother but it was surprising just how easily they were decieved.

Hey Ez - you are very kind but you have only seen one titchy piece( not even 1000 words !) .It's the sustained 100 000 word pieces that count and - I might add - your 6000 words posted yesterday are closerto the mark of what I'm talking about as really good writing then anything I've shown on the Cloud to date.
I have the first 30 000 words of my novel at a WW editor right now and feel sick to the pit of my stomach at the thought of her wading through what might very well be utter bunkum.

By the way I'm not sure I know the difference between compulsion and desire really ...

Ez,
Just because someone (IMHO) might not have a sturdy seed for writing, doesn't mean they don't have something of note.
There are plenty of people around, for instance, who don't have much imagination, don't read books, don't wonder "what if?", don't question much, don't want to touch the world. Yet they have other skills, equally valid and perhaps more necessary to our group survival - things like contentment with their lot, patience with repetetive tasks, endurance of the mundane, high boredom levels for things that need to be done, even enjoyment of drivel television and housework. Different things stimulate different people. My point is that if there isn't a seed for a particular quality, then it won't be stimulated.

Ah! When you put it like that I agree totally.

I don't mean this to sound snobby at all - we all have our strengths and weaknesses; the makings of a writer might not be in everybody, but does that matter?
I don't feel that I have the seed for running a nursery school, climbing mountains, winning Miss World or doing Alan Sugar's job - but I don't feel sad - I feel my skills are in other areas.

Well put. I too am without the seed for winning Miss World...

Now if you tell me that they aren't in writing, then I WILL be very, very sad.

Now, that would be just mean.

P.S. I feel that very very few people at naturally gifted enough that they wouldn't benefit from training. Many of us had piano lessons, but only Mozart composed great pieces when he was six.&

Ah...um, there is a cadre of thought that says this is an urban myth...Mozart. Most of his childhood was taken up with re-working his fathers work; which is still a phenomenal achievement but not the "creative" genius he is known for. His first, truly ligitimate, Mozart work was possibly at 18. New Scientist ran a brilliant article on child genius and why they do not turn into adult genius - the answer, by the way, was "practice"; the child genius that continued to put in hours and hours of work won through, but by schooling age, other things took over and the original "genius" lost their edge. The guy that wrote UNIX agreed - he even allowed a value to be placed on his "genius"; 200,000 hours of practice.

nbsp; For the rest of us, it's a question of relentless arpeggios and scales, before we're close to those heady heights.

P.P.S. It's a jolly good thing, if you ask me, that there aren't more writers about - think of the competition!

Um... have you not heard? According to one website I read - one in ten people in the UK alone believe they have a book in them. Of course one in a million truly do have a book inside them, on account they ate it, but I'm not going to take this thread off on a tanget with obesity jokes. Oh, wait... damn.

P.P.P.S. I'm not necessarily right btw - these are just my humble thoughts.

In this case I bow to you, as I believe you are correct and that I was hasty.

I’m sure there are people who fit every possible possibility possible.

 

On the one hand you have people like Harper Lee who wrote To Kill a Mocking Bird and published nothing further except the occasional essay – she must have preserved for about a year at most – but is one of the world’s best known writers. You have someone like Joseph Heller who spent almost 10 years on Catch 22 before he felt ready to do something with it. And then, with no examples in mind, there are surely plenty who have written dozens of books before achieving their best work.

 

Like AW touches on, I wouldn’t dismiss the importance of simple good luck either: writing the right book and at the right time and all that. I even think many great books were just stumbled upon and it wasn’t until after that the writer looked back that they realised: ‘ooh, hello, that’s a bit good.’

 

There’s a vast amount of analysis of classic literature which, I feel, is often just bollocks. It’s like at school I remember doing detailed studies on whatever her name was who wrote that damn poem about mushrooms. We spent hours trying to decipher what every word really meant, how it did this and that to the piece and linking into other aspects, which were probably never intended. She’d probably just munched some magic ones, or something, by accident and had no idea what the hell she was scribbling. Possibly!

 

There would an interesting argument to be had over whether its best to write one book and keep editing and editing until it’s good enough, or to keep writing more, and which is the better route.

 

Sylvia Plath – that was it, I think.

Hi AW - yes I do agree that painting is more subjective than writing - but really good art is really good art just like really good writing is really good writing.
I paint semi-professionaly and I can tell you that to do it really well is bloody hard work, consistent hard work - it involves (as does writing a novel I am finding...) problem solving of the highest order - finding the right balance between light and dark, tonal emphasis, the use of line and colour to get emotions and feeling across. A painting can give too much information or too little - just like a piece of writing !

A really good painting is like a well crafted highly evocative poem.

It is possibly easier for us to get away with mediocre painting than to get away with mediocre writing but it is possibly much more difficult for us to produce a really brilliant work in paint than it is to have a book accepted by a publisher....

on most creative writing courses - you have to submit a portfolio of work as part of the application process. which means there needs to be something, or even the glimmer of something that can serve as a foundation on which to build
i knew nothing about the mechanics of writing when i started (hell i didnt even know what genre it fell into) - and so its been a long and difficult road
but perseverence is definitely key - as some wise person(cant remember who) said the ABC of writing is simple: Apply Bottom to Chair

Hey Andy - yes - thanks for bringing me down to earth there. Everything you say is so true.
Sylvia Plath - nope I've never been a fan. The best thing I've read about Sylvia Plath was a biography ( her letters home I think, compiled by her mother...) I have allways found her poetry unbelievably strained - contrived might be the right word - but I am not a poetry pundit. Most people think she is brilliant or at least pretend to. so that brings up the question - touched upon by AW regarding the value of art ( and writing) -- how much of the stuff we are told is brilliant , is actually brilliant ? Marketing looms its ugly head yet again...bending our percetions and driving our desires...

Can you teach a child to paint by numbers? If so, you can teach a child to write.

Good point AW. Is reading the paint by numbers? Do we learn to write by seeing how it "should be done"?

That said, can you teach a child how to hold a readers attention in the palm of their hand, riveted on their every word? Can you show him/her how to take their readers imagination and fling it in the air, allowing it to revel in the freedom of flight before you bring it crashing to the ground, crushing all its hopes and dreams underfoot? I'm not so sure.

Can you show a child such magic? And from that could the child not absorb and learn it?

I could teach my son to play guitar but he will never be Jimi Hendrix. Not even close, not unless he is really, really dedicated and more to the point, lucky.

I may be wrong here, but weren't halucinogens a big part of the J-Man's creative arsenal? Maybe he won't be as good as Jimi Hendrix; maybe, with the right encouragement and hours of practice, he could make Jimi look pedestrian?

I think you can be taught almost anything to the level of competency. Beyond that requires a modicum of talent, whether it be aspirational or congenital. I don't think you can hope to compete with the best without it.

AW

Ah! Hmmm, I see and, from a position of trepidation, I worry you are absolutely correct. Could (and I'm clutching at straws here) "talent" be subjective?

P.S. I aspire to competency. I may accept adequacy instead.

I will accept nothing less than utter dominance. It may be that I achieve this a long time after I have passed away, but achieve it I will. :o) Ez

LOVE THAT - ABC !!!!!!!! Thanks Sumayya... off I go then.

.... By the way I'm not sure I know the difference between compulsion and desire really ...

One word; procrastination.

Compulsion is writing because you are driven

Desire is watching the 'telly because Arsenal are on but really you know you should be writing because when you do, you love it and I don't stop for days. You. You don't stop for days. Not I. You. *cough*...

Just checked Harper Lee and apparently she did write a bit beforehand – who’d have thought!

 

Although I do find that a number of my favourite books are first attempts and some by very inexperienced writers. Probably due to stronger creative energy and the culmination of years of thoughts and experience though.