Teaching Writing

Years ago, my daughter went to a special writers day for the school district, and when i asked her about the author who was the special guest for the day, I had never heard of her. I ended up looking her up on-line and discovering she hadn't published anything in about twelve years. At the time, I shook my head and said something about "real writers" that I am embarrassed about now. I had the attitude that a writer who hadn't published recently and who wasn't writing what was currently in vogue didn't have the chops to teach writing. Oh, how things have changed!

After spending many years in the world of publishing and meeting many writers, I have found to my surprise and chagrin that the writers who are current best sellers are not always the most interesting speakers about writing and often do not know how to teach writing at all. This is, I suspect, partly because they are new to the field and haven't spent a long time thinking about writing, but are spending a lot of time writing and touring. (I wonder if they might be better speakers about self-promotion and being celebrities.) And writers I've never heard of, or who did their most commercially successful work years ago are often the wisest, kindest, most giving people I've ever met.

The old saying about teachers being the people who aren't able to do what they teach for a living is really backwards and insulting. The truth is that there are very different skills necessary for teachers of writing and writers. Some writers develop the skills to be great teachers and others don't. Some writers think a lot about how writing works, analyzing it and verbalizing it to other writers. Others just don't have the interest or capacity to do this. But there's no need to make judgments (as I did) about who is a "real" writer and who isn't.

At Writing For Charity last weekend, I sat in on a couple of panels with Matt Kirby and every time, he made an effort to tell people in the audience that he considered them all professional writers, whether or not they had published anything. Being engaged in writing to the level that you pay to go to conferences is all it takes. Publication is about a combination of luck and skill and taking chances. It's not about effort. And teaching writing is about kindness, openness, and a lot of experience.