Beginners and Experts Check ALL the Boxes, by Eric Witchey

Beginners and Experts Check ALL the Boxes

Eric Witchey

Conference seminars are both wonderful and horrible.

They’re horrible in that the emotionally and cognitively complex thing writers do can’t be taught in 60-90 minutes, if it can be taught at all. I often begin my conference teaching with a line something like, “I can’t teach you to write. I can show you some tips and tricks I have learned, but only you can teach yourself to write.” Another version of this statement is, “Practice!”

The seminars are wonderful in that writers can glean bits and pieces of craft while hobnobbing with other writers in a joyful, high-energy environment that reinforces the value of an activity that is too often painful and solitary. At a conference, enough joy and knowledge can be had to keep us going for a while.

This morning, I was preparing the little catalog blurbs that describe seminars I’ll be teaching at a couple conferences this year. The online form I had to fill out asked the question, “What level of writer will benefit from this seminar?” The check-box choices in the drop-down were:

BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedProfessional

I tried to check them all, but the system won’t let me check them all. You can only check one.

Silly conference.

I’ve been teaching conference seminars since 1995, so I fancy I know a little bit about the dynamics of the environment. This exercise in preparation reminded me of a couple things I think are very important for all writers to keep in mind. Certainly, they are important for conference coordinators to keep in mind.

To sell out a seminar, put “marketing” in the title.Corollary One: Hardly any writers at the conference are anywhere near ready for marketing seminars.Corollary Two: To kill the attendance of a craft seminar, put it in the room next to a marketing seminar.Every writer in the room knows something the other writers do not know, including the teacher.If you label a seminar as for professional writers, mostly amateurs will attend it.If you label a seminar as for advanced writers, mostly beginners will attend it.If you label a seminar as for intermediate writers, mostly beginners will attend it.If you label a seminar as for beginning writers, a few terrified first-time conference writers and several professionals will attend it.

I have a musician friend who describes this phenomenon as follows.

“Beginners who want to play professionally skip practicing scales. Professionals who want to learn to play better, practice scales.”

Another friend, an advanced Aikido practitioner, recently told me this.

“Beginners want to practice intermediate throws. Intermediates want to practice advanced throws. Masters want to learn to walk.”

So it is with writers, and there’s absolutely no reason it should be otherwise.

Yes, the immediate response to this odd practitioner’s paradigm is that everybody knows how important it is to focus on the basics. That leads to an odd fallacy of thought. I know I’ve caught myself thinking this way. Have you? The fallacy, thought or spoken in tones of confident pride or righteousness, goes like this, “They should focus on the basics first to grow faster.”

Except, they clearly do not.

Conjugate with me:

We do not.

He, she, it does not.

I do not.

Objective consideration suggests I should suspect that even after 25 years of conference teaching I still do not.

Instead, we reach endlessly for the skills that are beyond our grasp, and we do it from the wobbly foundation of haphazard skills we’ve cobbled together. Why should they focus on basics and build a solid foundation on which to add layer after solid layer of skill until they are masters of their craft?

Uh… Oh, God. I have to go back to college and start over. I’ve wasted decades of my life. Pardon me while I go cry.

Okay, I’m better now.

Recently, I had a chat with a new and inexperienced (from my frame of reference) seminar teacher. She said she’d been taught to require students to “prove me wrong.” I decided she needed a few more years of experience before we’d have a meaningful exchange of pedagogical ideas.

Here’s the real take-away. In my humble opinion, the responsibility for providing a step forward to conference seminar students is entirely the teacher’s. The burden of proof falls completely on the teacher. Additionally, if everybody in the room knows something the teacher does not know, then a really good teacher behaves more like a guide than a teacher. If the concept the guide is presenting is actually a core, dramatic principle that can be recognized and executed in text, the guide’s job is to lead the seminar in a way that allows the participants to discover the concept for themselves. If that discovery has already happened for the participant, or happens in the seminar, the guide’s job is to open new vistas of exploration.

In short, the guide’s job is to make sure that no matter what level of development a writer has, or thinks they have, the combination of the concept with the participation of the group will lead anyone who attends into new discoveries. If the guide does this well, the “advanced” and “professional” writers might even discover concepts, tricks, and techniques the seminar leader has never considered.

That’s why I want to check all the boxes. It’s also why, in spite of 25 years of seminar teaching, I go to beginner-level seminars, intermediate seminars, advanced seminars, and professional seminars. Everybody in the room knows something I don’t know.

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