Hey, folks! Copy editor Lisa here. I’ve recently been thinking of a book I read during my training to teach college English called “Naming What We Know.” While the title is gimmicky/granola, its short essays about the hard-fought knowledge learned from writing are pretty cool—so I thought, why not share excerpts from my favorite chapter, “All Writers Have More to Learn”?
SHIRLEY ROSE: All Writers Have More To Learn
Rose’s essay, for which the chapter is titled, states that a common misconception about writing is that we assume (never a dangerous word, right?) that “all writing abilities can be learned once and for always.”
She writes that this assumption (like most sweeping generalizations) is a mistake: “although writing is learned, all writers always have more to learn about writing.”
Womp womp!
She makes the case that
Writers soon discover that writing strategies that are effective for them in one context are often inappropriate and ineffective in another context in which they need or want to write; even when strategies work, writers still struggle to figure out what they want to say and how to say it. They struggle because writing is not just transcribing preformed ideas, but also developing new ones; thus a writer never becomes a perfect writer who already knows how to write anything and everything
(emphasis added).
Therein lies the wonderful complication: as fiction writers, we are constantly trying to tell a story in a totally new way, more or less. Sure, we can play up tropes or lean heavily into genre (which is now a loaded word for so many people), but those are merely lenses through which we (hopefully) watch the characters transform, whether succeeding or failing.
But Rose makes a helpful point: “some writing habits developed in one context can be helpful in another.” Yay! But what’s the downside? “There is no such thing as ‘writing in general’; therefore, there is no one lesson about writing that can make writing good in all contexts.”
Is this frustrating or liberating? She makes it worse—I mean, continues:
Writers must struggle to write in new contexts and genres in a matter of transferring what they know, but also learning new things about what works in the present situation. The difficulty of drawing on prior knowledge in this way has spawned a thread of research . . . The working knowledge that enables a writer to select the practices and strategies appropriate for a particular writing context and task is learned over time through experience as a writer and as a reader of writing. Therefore, a demonstration of one’s ability to write effectively in one context cannot constitute proof of one’s ability to write in other contexts.
First of all, she means that I can’t write a Stompin’ Vice Cowboy Robots story about an Alien Marine Family of Spurgle Noir Moggies from Mars.
Though each story carries imprints of what we love to write—be it a phrasing, recurrent character, et cetera—each new story project we start should begin with a feeling of unfamiliarity, whether that’s exciting or intimidating.
If not, are we really growing as writers?
Now say why
I remember sitting in a math class that I was enjoying, yet once again struggling in (English major with math minor, I said—it would be fun, I said) when suddenly, I perked up at this realization: if we don’t feel dumb every now and then, then that means we’re not trying to learn something new. We’re not stretching ourselves to do something that we’ve never done before.
While I likely have that dumb feeling more frequently than the rest of society (heh), I find that unknown horizon exciting, a challenge to overcome.
Rose’s essay was always somewhat of a shock and relief to my students. I told them that every writing project felt for me like bumping around in a dark room. I learned that every project had to start out simply bumping around, playing with what worked and what didn’t. Eventually, I would learn where all the furniture was, but certainly not at first.
Not knowing something—running to those horizons and picking up those gauntlets—is the excitement of being alive. It allows us to connect to others. Instead of shying away from writing something because it’s unfamiliar or outside of our wheelhouse, why not treat that untapped knowledge like a beautiful gift to be opened? If we show readers we’re not afraid to take chances, fail, or look silly, then we don’t have to lose that feeling we had as young children experiencing a fresh, new world. Suddenly, we gain so much. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “the world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.”
That brings us back to the writer’s job: to show readers the ordinary as extraordinary. We must wonder—our profession demands it of us, otherwise we fail our readers.
Now—show us some horizons.