Amanda Frederickson's Blog: Musings - Posts Tagged "learning"
Soap Box
There’s a lot, a lot of “follow your dreams” encouragement, which is great, but not actually practical. Hope is an essential flame to keep alive, but feeding it shouldn’t be the full time focus.
A lot of the writing career advice dished up wouldn’t hold up if it were applied to any other career, so why are writers expected to eat it? You wouldn’t feel very safe if a nursing school’s approach to patient care was to throw the students at the patients without any training. Yet in writing there seems to be a general attitude of “just submit to publications in your genre and eventually you’ll get in,” rather than teaching how to tell a story. In my own college experience, I learned more from one screenwriting class than all of my other creative writing classes together.
If someone is trying to learn a second language, they aren’t told, “just speak it.” They’re taught vocabulary and grammar. They’re given basics. They certainly aren’t fluent yet, and they shouldn’t be treated as such. There’s a lot of complexity in learning a new language, just as there are worlds of complexity in learning to write well in your own.
There is any number of articles on how to approach editors and agents and the traditional path to getting your work in print, but to find solid advice on honing your actual craftsmanship feels like searching for a white elephant. Worse, a lot of the advice selling itself as “craft improvement” is more about a personal pet peeve.
More and more, lately, I’ve been thinking there simply isn’t enough solid guidance for writers who want to build a career, not a rainbow.
(/rant)
A lot of the writing career advice dished up wouldn’t hold up if it were applied to any other career, so why are writers expected to eat it? You wouldn’t feel very safe if a nursing school’s approach to patient care was to throw the students at the patients without any training. Yet in writing there seems to be a general attitude of “just submit to publications in your genre and eventually you’ll get in,” rather than teaching how to tell a story. In my own college experience, I learned more from one screenwriting class than all of my other creative writing classes together.
If someone is trying to learn a second language, they aren’t told, “just speak it.” They’re taught vocabulary and grammar. They’re given basics. They certainly aren’t fluent yet, and they shouldn’t be treated as such. There’s a lot of complexity in learning a new language, just as there are worlds of complexity in learning to write well in your own.
There is any number of articles on how to approach editors and agents and the traditional path to getting your work in print, but to find solid advice on honing your actual craftsmanship feels like searching for a white elephant. Worse, a lot of the advice selling itself as “craft improvement” is more about a personal pet peeve.
More and more, lately, I’ve been thinking there simply isn’t enough solid guidance for writers who want to build a career, not a rainbow.
(/rant)
