The Search for the Ultimate Writing Guru
By Jan O'Hara | April 18, 2016 |
Eventually, if we to function as writers, there comes a time when we must put down the craft book, close out the browser with its carefully curated bookmarks, and put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. We must take time away from the experts and breathe life into our fictitious worlds. This is an obvious truth and yet one I resist time and again despite feeling a nearly unbearable urge to write.
I’ll begin after one more article, I tell myself, one more class. I’m like the child at bedtime who, eyes drooping and head nodding, insists on another trip to the bathroom or a glass of cold water.
If the truth is evident—that at some point we need to learn to write through actual writing—why can it be so difficult to turn from passive to active learning?
Sometimes it’s a case of simple fear in that we believe we aren’t up to the present day’s task. Perhaps we will be required to use a technique we haven’t yet mastered. Maybe we don’t know where we are headed and haven’t built up a tolerance to the discomfort of uncertainty.
Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe we are due to tackle a head-banger of a sex scene and suddenly realize it will be read by our mother and the sniffing ladies from her coffee group. (Or worse, by our well-meaning fathers who don’t read a word of fiction otherwise, but who vow to be supportive.)
Lately, however, I’ve increasingly wondered how much of this resistance isn’t retreat into pure habit and conditioning.
For instance, many of us work in careers where we’ve been taught to follow established processes and do all we can to avoid unnecessary risk. This makes sense. Generally speaking it’s unwise to promote creativity in airplane mechanics, surgeons, or nuclear power technicians.
Then there are those of us who come from families which teach deferral to authority. Perhaps we’ve absorbed the my house, my rules mentality and have unconsciously extended that model to our writing teachers, equating their approval with security. (In some families, succumbing to an authoritarian mindset can be the only way to ensure psychological or physical survival.) X knows best, we think. If I adopt X’s mentality and techniques, I can be guaranteed a good result.
Automatic and Unconscious Deferral to Authority
It’s this last situation I wanted to talk about today in the context of the movie Kumaré , which is one of the most powerful treatises I know on the limitations of authority.
Have you seen this movie? If not, be warned that spoilers lie ahead.
Kumaré is part reality entertainment, part documentary, part ethical quagmire. It follows the path of Vikram Gandhi, an independent filmmaker of South Asian ethnicity who was raised in New Jersey.
During Gandhi’s early adulthood, he reports taking note of the Western world’s fascination with all things Eastern. Our tendency to romanticize his parents’ culture causes him to ponder several questions: How easy would it be to pass oneself off as a guru in America? If successful, what would be the consequences?
To that end, for the sake of cinematic exploration, he adopts a pseudo-Hindi accent, grows his hair and beard. He develops a basic spiritual dogma he calls the Mirror Philosophy. It is both generic and inoffensive enough to sound plausible. [”1) REFLECT, 2) ENVISION, 3) BUILD A PATH, 4) ENACT…5) UNVEIL”] By the time he arrives in Arizona as Sri Kumaré, his accoutrements include saffron colored robes, and two ardent and equally ersatz followers. Their role? To provide a patina of legitimacy and act as seed crystals to his pool of potential devotees.
You can probably see where this is going…
Yes, in an incredibly short amount of time he acquires a gaggle of disciples. Their backgrounds vary. A number are obvious “marks” in the sense they live on the fringes of society and seem cognitively vulnerable. But his group also includes the outwardly privileged and those whose occupations would seem to require a goodly amount of skepticism and intellectual rigor—lawyers and engineers, for example.
We watch as Gandhi leads them through a mostly benign and helpful set of practices. I see nothing wrong with creating a loving community, teaching meditation, modeling deep listening, or propagating the physical practice of yoga, for instance. Nor do I argue with the teaching of his core spiritual principle, which is that we must value and pay attention to the still, small voice within. It’s remarkably similar to the oft-discussed writing philosophy of Take what works and discard the rest.
In time, Gandhi himself benefits in a spiritual sense. In an example of making-it-by-faking-it, he enjoys the intimacy of the community. He admires the generous, gentle persona of his Sri Kumaré alter-ego and vows to become more like him.
Beneath it all, however, runs an undercurrent which made me deeply uncomfortable.
There are the scenes in which his subjects bare their souls to him much as they would with any trusted counselor. Their emotional vulnerability is simultaneously breath-taking in its courage and cringe-inducing because of their audience’s unworthiness.
Then there are scenes which verge on the mocking, that contain the outright bite of satire. At times Kumaré‘s devotees come perilously close to enacting these lines from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.
Brian: I’m not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!
Girl: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
Brian: What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!
Followers: He is! He is the Messiah!
Brian: Now, f*** off!
[silence]
Arthur: How shall we f*** off, O Lord?
Finally, there is the palpable tension created by the film’s dramatic irony. We know we are watching a scam be perpetuated, but Gandhi’s followers are fully invested. They appear to be thriving under his tutelage. We cannot help but dread the fallout of his upcoming “reveal” in which he plans to explain his deception, and that it was supposedly all concocted for their edification.
After several false starts to his confession, which owes something to the delayed appearance of a guilty conscience, the deed is done.
Three psychological patterns emerge in the survivors.
1. The utterly devastated:
As with the Milgram electrocution experiment we discussed before, Gandhi’s film subjects had NOT consented to the forced insight provided by his film. They thought they were embarking on a path of spiritual guidance and support. Instead, they earn unwelcome and irrefutable evidence of their gullibility. (I am the kind of person who will wholeheartedly embrace a fraud. I can be suckered at the most personal of levels.)
Though it’s been years since I saw this film, I still wonder about this group’s woundedness and how they handled it since Gandhi appeared to have made no provisions for their subsequent welfare. Did they retreat from spiritual endeavors forever? Did they seek another authority figure to handle the damage inflicted by this one, potentially perpetuating a cycle of dependence? Or did they ultimately come to be more like the people in the next two groups?
2. People who wanted nothing to do with him, but appeared to be psychologically okay:
As I understood this group, they were ultimately fine with their own behavior and vulnerability and suffered no loss of dignity. As far as they were concerned, if anyone should be feeling a sense of shame, that would be Gandhi. (Ironically, this group’s judgment seemed to cause him the most emotional pain while they came the closest to embodying the principles his Kumaré persona taught.)
3. The people who readily forgave him at all levels, both spiritual and personal:
This third group puzzles me. I haven’t decided if they are an extremely generous and spiritually advanced subset of those in #2, or if they were repressing their own needs for the sake of the camera. Were they truly that fast at turning a perceived betrayal into learning? (Haha, you sure got me. That’ll teach me for being so trusting.) Or were they the type of people who would remain in a marriage fractured by infidelity when they really desired monogamy?
Regardless, the commonality between the last two groups—the people who appeared to be getting through the experience with intact psyches—was this: They had remained within their integrity. They took responsibility for their own actions. Whatever activities they undertook, albeit upon the advice of a faux guru, still held spiritual validity for them.
Which brings us back to writing and the tendency some of us (i.e. me) have to displace actual writing by the search for the right teacher or the right class or the best process.
Please don’t misunderstand, Unboxeders. Unlike the world of mockumentaries, I doubt that there are any teachers or instructors who perpetuate willing fraud as they provide writing advice. (Business advice might be another matter.) If anything, the world is filled with earnest, well-meaning people who give away their time and tools for free, or at the cost of the time they could be spending on their own fiction. I myself owe a great debt to many here at WU, not to mention the wider online community.
That said, there are limits to what we can accomplish through passive learning. Deep down, I think we know when its time to venture out onto the page, to become vulnerable, and to invest our time and spirit in active exploration. We can take the tools offered by our teachers with us, but it is ultimately up to us to test their validity via willful experimentation.
That way, if we ever find success–good–it is ours, and if we find failure–good–that is ours, too. The point being, whatever the outcome, we’ve assumed personal responsibility for and joy in the journey.
I believe this to be practice for an excellent life.
That way, if the day should come when we are approached by a charismatic, slick, staff-wielding saffron-wearer, we shall be prepared. While others are being rocked by their fraudulence, we’ll be intact and ready for action. “Eh,” we will be able to say. “I checked that out two years ago and it didn’t pass the sniff test. But here is what did work for me. I know because I test-drove it.”
Now I’d love to hear from you, Unboxeders. Do you find yourself avoiding writing by seeking out one more learning opportunity, one last guru? How do you balance the desire to learn from others with the need to grow experientially?
[coffee]
A USA Today bestselling author, former family physician and academic, Jan O’Hara (she/her) left the world of medicine behind to follow her dreams of becoming a writer. She writes love stories that zoom from wackadoodle to heartfelt in six seconds flat: (Opposite of Frozen; Cold and Hottie; Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures). Her latest Christmas novella, The Cowboy’s Comeback Christmas, is part of a 9-author-strong anthology (A Cowboy This Christmas: A Sweet Romance Anthology). She also contributed to Author in Progress, a Writer’s Digest Book edited by Therese Walsh.
Heavy subject, sounds like a fascinating movie (I’d never be man enough to watch those scenes, thinking about people being duped).
I think one important distinction is that gurus have often claimed to offer advice that’s good for everyone. Whereas you rightly point out, writing advice usually proceeds from a knowledge of the plurality of our pursuits, goals, origins, genres, and so much more. Writing Rules are as often mocked as stated! They can be quite funny.
Also, life-gurus and religious leaders always declaim in a very moral direction (like polygamy or giving all your money, etc). This fellow never urged his followers to break the law, for example, so it’s a little safer than it easily could have been! And in writing advice, well… the only “good” is success, fame, money/a living. Moral impact is secondary, I guess I’m saying.
Fabulous post, thanks so much!
Will, it was a difficult to watch, I won’t lie. Once begun, though, I couldn’t turn it off. He never crossed the line into outright requests for money–though his career advanced because of them. However, as a former family doc, that would have almost been easier to forgive than the psychological boundary violations. (I wonder if other professional caregivers would have been as troubled or if that’s my personal no-go zone.)
For the most part I agree in that writing rules are offered with qualifiers. There are few presented as dogma, but that might be an artifact of time. For instance, perhaps Heinlein originally presented his rules as only one of many models for working. Since then, in the repetition, they’ve been given extra gravitas by his echoers. An interesting point, regardless!
I’m also troubled by the psychological boundary violations. A psychological con messes with a person’s fundamental beliefs and worldview, which is why I think it’s more damaging than a purely financial con.
This exactly, Grace. I saw him as belonging to the same category of violation as a psychiatrist who’d sleep with a patient. It was an utter betrayal of trust.
Yes, I’ve been reading recently on C-PTSD, and I can imagine anyone who already had that could be completely ripped apart by this scam. My goodness.
That was my thought exactly, Marcy. The people most likely to be taken in are the ones whose boundaries have been systematically eroded by prior events.
This post resonated loudly with me. I’ve wanted to write professionally for years, reading article after article, book after book, fiddling with the practice activity or that one, doing NaNoWriMo every year (and completing it), and attending lots of great classes. To try and motivate myself once, I started posting word counts on the web. After realizing that (a) no one was reading those posts and (b) the numbers showed I was writing everything BUT fiction, I got disheartened and stopped.
Several weeks ago I reached the same realization you talk about here. If I was ever to actually make writing my career, or at least ever have any kind of audience, I would have to actually WRITE. As Heinlein said in his famous rule set… you have to write, finish what you write, avoid going into perpetual revision mode, put it on the market, and leave it there…
So I started pushing myself in a new way. I started a blog where I would publish one new story per week. Then I made sure friends and family knew about it. This would force me to write. The deadline would force me to finish the stories and to “publish” them, and not to spend a lot of time editing because I’d never make my deadline. By definition, they’re “on the market” (i.e. Internet) and will stay there until someone reads them (i.e., “sold”).
Better yet, a year from how I should have 52 stories that I can choose from to polish and build at least one book I can sell.
Good for you, Michael. External commitments can be a fantastic way to push through the phase of eternal preparation. I’ve set a similar path in motion, and I have to say it helps. Go us. ;)
What an unusual and stimulating post today, Jan. I’m not a guru follower of any kind and especially when it comes to writing instructors. I pretty much shut off the teachers who claim their way of writing is the best way and the only way to write. Of late, I’ve been reading a writing craft book every month and review it on my blog (I used to read four a year at a every new season). Getting different perspectives from a variety of authors and writing experts is what works for me to keep polishing the skills and widen the creativity.
I like Will’s ‘Writing Rules are as often mocked as stated!’ Is that ever true.
Paula, so if I understand, you’ve created an independent curriculum of study BUT you’re not waiting on the learning to actually write. That strikes me as an organized, disciplined process that protects your work. Fantastic.
As for Will’s point, there are bloggers who offer their tips in a self-deprecating manor. They don’t hold themselves out as an authority but rather as a peer whose found joy/success following a process. Many on WU seem to follow that model.
Oh good grief. My writing life story. Though it’s not so much that I continually seek new gurus. I have a shelf and Kindle full of them now, many still waiting to be read. It’s more that, once I attend a conference or read something truly revealing, I feel like the manuscript that I thought was complete is not even good enough to pass off as a rough draft. Our own Donald Maass is good for causing that type of turbulence. Go listen to the man speak and then tell me your current wip is as good as you once imagined.
I have learned to let go, though. I find I’m much better off taking what I’ve learned into the next manuscript, knowing full well that some Maassian speaker will unsettle the foundations of that work as well.
As far as every day continuing ed, I limit myself to a few chapters per week of whatever it is I feel I need the most help with. Usually that falls under the narrow heading of “writing stuff that doesn’t suck.” I bite off a bit and move on. I will never be a perfect writer (which would lose me many, many friends anyway), but my goal is that each book be better than the last.
That’s really the best we can hope for.
I love that you’ve turned Don into an adjective, Ron. Well done. I hope he sees this comment. ;)
Sounds like you’ve struck a good balance between ongoing learning and action. A pragmatic approach. You wouldn’t happen to be Canadian, would you?
No, but I live in SE Michigan. The wind is from the east today.
Hey Boss, engaging post with lots to think about, as usual. I may be wrong, but it seems there’s an element of guilt at the root of this. As in, “I should be writing more, particularly during the time I spend in study.” Whether that’s true or not, here’s my guilty feeling: “All of these great mentors offer me so much, and I can’t seem to fully incorporate their teachings into all of this writing I’m doing.” In other words, I feel like a slow learner. Or maybe it’s more that I feel I can conceptualize the lessons, but that I’m slow to actually apply them in practice.
I suppose the good news for me is that I still lose myself in story well enough to lose the lessons of technique and conveyance in the process. I guess what I have to keep reminding myself is that practice leads to integration by rote. But I have to keep the lessons on replay, just to jam them inside my thick skull well enough for them to begin to appear in the next session. WU is good for this – have you ever noticed that, in spite of the novelty and growth here, there’s also a sort of cyclical “back-to-school, just when you need it” nature to it, too?
Thank goodness for patient and generous mentors, like you, Jan.
Good Sir V, Lord help you if you’re depending upon me as a mentor. (Except for advice like, “Listen to Barbara/David/Juliet/other WU member’s name.”)
;)
Am I feeling guilty? Hmm. Panic-stricken might be a more apt description. I’ve committed to a tight external deadline which should preclude anything other than active learning, but boy-oh, am I reluctant to leave my comfort zone.
As to the situation about implementing learning, I hear you. In my experience, though, those hard-won lessons are those which, when finally mastered, stick for a lifetime–at least this is true of efforts I’ve made in every other venue, so I’ll assume it’s valid for writing.
Guilty, guilty, guilty. I’d be afraid to add up the number of how-to-write books on my Kindle. Not to mention the ones by writers whose skills I’d like to emulate, like Michelle Hoover and Dawn Tripp, to name only two. Reading those helps, but it’s also such a great excuse to put off the work that counts most.
A wonderful post — thanks, Jan. You deserve not only the coffee but the Danish.
You are my twin in this matter, Jean. And thank you kindly. :)
I’ve always been pretty skeptical of authority figures in general and so-called writing experts in particular. For a time I was very mindful of all the experts and their rules. Then it dawned on me that for every person who says “Don’t do this” I found three or four who said “If you do it, and it works, why not?” I stopped the silly business of paying attention to the experts. I read a lot and some of the best authors out there don’t follow those rules.
Recently I encountered one self-proclaimed guru online who constantly issues lists of what he considers major writing errors: “NEVER use italics. Never do this, never do that. If you do, you’re an amateur! Write exactly the way I do, and you will achieve writing success!”
When I checked out his bio I discovered that this man has never written any fiction. He had two newspaper articles and one non-fiction book to his name, yet he had a legion of aspiring writers who hung onto his every word as though it was carved in stone, the absolute holy gospel.
I emailed him and I pointed out that Stephen King breaks the ‘no italics’ rule and other holy commandments on a regular basis and Mr. King seems to do just fine. I also told the guru that I’d never heard of him until that moment. I was polite but his response wasn’t. I had a good laugh.
Trying to make every single word, every story, every book perfection is a darn good way to run ourselves crazy. We poor humans struggle to achieve that impossible goal but we’re fooling ourselves. My motto is “Take what works and leave the rest.”
Serbella–what a pretty name, BTW–you sound like a firecracker. Perhaps a guru when it comes to anti-establishment thinking? ;)
I read a recent article on how to become instantly more creative. One solution offered was to recall all the times your thinking was unboxed before sitting down to write. Methinks this wouldn’t be a challenge for you.
Jan, how well I know this particular procrastination technique! If something is difficult, I’ll spend hours circling the page (read poetry books, how-tos, yet another article) until I can put it off no longer. And the answers always come by writing through it, playing with the words. I *know* this both intellectually and experientially, yet I procrastinate.
That said, I have benefitted greatly from reading a lot, including writing books. Learning how other writers do it has helped me to discover my own process. There are a few I return to over and over because they are like good friends who nudge me in the right direction when I need the help. Writing gurus, if you will — Madeleine L’Engle, Julia Cameron, Donald Maass :)
That trailer made me ill and at the same time, I watched it with fascination like one would a scene of an accident. I wondered why the followers didn’t question the camera following them.
Vijaya, when I wrote this article I suspected I’d be in good company.
Personally, I can’t envision a future in which I’d never want to learn from another writer. There’s such richness to be found in other points of view. It’s all about the balance, isn’t it?
As for the movie, reportedly the subjects all signed consent forms. But I expect they didn’t understand the tone and nature of the narrative they were enabling. Also, I had the sense that for some of them, this was their first experience of being truly heard–why it was wrenching to watch.
I rarely pick up the craft books, not because I don’t think I can learn from them but because reading about a technique doesn’t mean that I can or should incorporate it into my own writing. I find that reading a lot of fiction helps me the most. I try to soak up what really fine writers do and hope for the best.
This was a great piece (loved the Monty Python joke!). In terms of resisting gurus, I think we can add social media and writing business gurus to the mix these days. Often they are very, very helpful–but we all have to figure out what works for us individually.
SK, that’s an important point–the difference between studying an interpretation of fantastic writing versus going straight to the source material. If you have the ability to do the latter, that strikes me as an infinitely faster and more valuable approach.
I agree with your advice to view social media and business gurus with healthy skepticism. When money is involved, things can get sketchy fast. That said, of *course* there people out there (and here) who offer helpful services.
Hi Jan,
Your post puts me in mind of something Aldous Huxley said: “Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy.” You could also say that generalized intelligence–the capacity for critical thinking–is also the best defense against snake-oil salesmen, gurus, and self-declared experts.
As you point out, those with a personal history shaped by authoritarian styles of upbringing are also vulnerable. It’s much harder for someone with such a background to gain autonomy in her or his thoughts and opinions.
I agree with you: all this applies to writers. IMO, those most strongly motivated to write are more likely to learn through reading literature, not through heavy reliance on craft books (which, before the counter-attack begins, I acknowledge have their place).
The explosion in the craft-book, how-to market is perfectly in sync with the explosion in self-publishing. Many more people see themselves today as writers than was true until recently. But are all such people in love with the idea of being a writer, or with actually becoming one? One way to perpetuate the illusion is to chase after each new system, defining terminology, piece of software, etc.
Maybe the best way to put this issue in perspective is to ask a simple (in my view, rhetorical) question: how many of the books we love owe their appeal to craft books, systems or gurus? Aren’t the books we love written by writers who were captured themselves by fine books, books that made them want to be writers?
Barry Knister,
How can we tell if the authors of books we love were taught by gurus, craft books, etc? Is this information on Wikipedia? I know about some of their education, but not most. It’s hard to say how they came up with their novels. (I’m not being argumentative, just asking.)
Tina–
Craft books didn’t exist when Hemingway did his thing. Or Raymond Chandler, or Ross MacDonald or Elmore Leonard. And so forth.
I didn’t know that. Thank you.
Barry, I mostly agree with your points. One could argue that the books which teach craft and critical thinking about writing help us become better discussors of craft and thinking about writing than actual writers. (SK said much the same thing above, if I’ve understood her.)
It’s a fair question. How many of my favorite writers have BAs, MFAs or read craft books? How many relied on their understanding of story based upon reading? Even if they have BAs or MFAs, did the writing books only confirm what they intrinsically knew (or allow them to use fancy words to describe their understanding)?
It’s sort of like the debate we’ve been having for years about mammograms. Do they find breast cancers at a more curable stage, thus saving lives, or merely provide a longer timeline of known illness before death?
Interesting point!
Great article Jan.
I have recently dealing with a similar struggle. My MS is almost done (working thru edit # 7) and I thought edit #5 was final edit. I don’t deny that the MS is better with each writerly advice incorporated and each edit, but When does it end. There has to be the time to let go. I once worked with someone who said, “you can do it right or you can do it now, you can’t do it right now.”
So the question I’ve been asking myself is, how “perfect” does a MS need to be befor shopping it out. And is there really a perfect MS out there. From out discussions on the book dissections, we’d agree that even bestsellers aren’t truly perfect. But there is the fear of putting it out there and then realizing that I missed something or some scene should’ve been better. I think I’ve gone on a tangent from your article. But I agree with you. Just as the movie might be teaching us to live our lives as best as we can without blindly trusting “gurus” the same applies to writing. There is a time to stop reading/listening to more advice and to get busy writing. Thanks for the reminder and Wake up call.
Priya, I have yet to reach that settled-in-my-bones this-is-ready stage with my fiction, so you have me there. But I regularly reach this with my blog posts.
It’s taken me a lot to get there, though. I’m not saying my blog posts are perfect; merely that they are to the point I have done my best by them within the time at hand.
The keys to getting there for me?
1. External, reasonable deadlines, because they force me to make decisions. (I can argue both sides of a debate with equal intensity and commitment.)
2. Repetition.
3. What Seth Godin calls “shipping”. i.e. putting the stuff out there and discovering nothing explodes if an article falls flat or proves controversial.
It’s much harder to achieve #2 and #3 in novel-length fiction! Obviously. But I bet if you were to ask Barbara or Juliet or Julianna or any other prolific novelist, they’d agree with the above.
Now we just have to write another 10 or 15 books and we can figure out whether this is true for us. ;)
Interesting. It brings me back to the quote I so often see from Somerset Maugham about the 3 rules of writing, but unfortunately no one knows what they are.
Truth is a slippery thing. It changes as we change, or some philosophers might say we’re just rotating around it facets and looking at it from another POV.
The interesting thing about the false prophet in the movie, is that he did spout a facet of truth even though he was doing it from a false intent. Does that make his facets of truth any less true? Does truth depend on the purity of the messenger, or is it above the duplicitous nature of man? I don’t know the answer to these questions, or if there are any. If I think about it any longer my head will explode.
B, it is a head-explodey type of movie. One you’ll remember for a long time if you care to watch it because it asks precisely those deep questions.
For the record, I think some truths are absolute, others are relative, but we are responsible for deciding what we believe. After all, as we all belong to the human race, it is possible for a true guru to speak a well-meaning falsehood and a faux guru to speak the truth.
That’s why, I believe, the second and third groups would turn out okay. No matter the deceit perpetuated on them, they hadn’t been false to themselves.
We are flooding here in Houston today, so I am getting a lot of writing done. I will be brief in response to your post. As I used to tell my 7th and 8th grade students, writing is a skill, just like learning to play the piano well or to throw a football into a receiver’s hands. Writing, like all skills, must be practiced in order for improvement to take place. All the craft lessons in the world are not going to replace the benefits gained by practicing one’s writing, seeking input from trusted crit partners, and revising with intention and forethought.
Linda, you’re making me laugh (in admiration) with your directness. Want to write my next post? You could spare everyone from having to read an extra 1300 words. ;)
Glad I could bring a little levity to your day. In your post, you raised a question I have asked as well. Studying craft with knowledgable people is a great way to get started, and in some ways, can shorten the painful “beginneritis” most of us suffer when starting out, but it is the practice that makes us strong. And yes, I would be happy to write a post for WU anytime! :-)
I have no idea about WU’s calendar, but if you have an idea you’d like to pitch, contact Therese through the contact tab above.
Guilty as charged. Like others have mentioned I have a sagging shelf full of writing craft books and consume sites like WU and WD voraciously yet I never know if any of this trade craft learning is working without any critical feedback. I have three blogs where I have posted some of my writing and never once has anyone offered a constructive comment that would help me hone the craft or even let me know that I was on the right or wrong track.
The exception to this was my participation in the LinkedIn Writer’s Hangout Contests consisting of flash fiction stories based on a prompt. It was fun but you can only do so much in 4000 characters or less.
Bob, we’ve got this. We can do better moving forward, right?
For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t take that lack of feedback as anything significant or worrisome. In my experience, it’s rare to get helpful critique unless you’ve a) specifically asked and set it up for success b) paid it forward c) shown that you’re sincere in wanting to improve.
Do you know about the Writer Unboxed Facebook page? There is a document where you can ask and offer for critique. I believe some members have found it to be helpful. If you’re interested, go here: https://staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud/what-you-should-know-about-wus-facebook-group-aka-the-best-writing-group-on-the-interwebs/
Thanks for the feedback link. BTW, saw Kumare last night on Netflix, very interesting.
That was fast! Yes, it is a fascinating movie. I’m glad you found it thought-provoking.
Thought-provoking post, Jan, as always! In many ways, I tend to be “guru-avoidant”: even when I was in school, I tended to pick advisors who were more laissez-faire, and would let me do things my way, rather than following a strict set of rules or a structure. And of course that sometimes meant I made my way to the goal the long way round, and/or made things harder for myself. ;-)
That said, I still experience the resistance you describe, between shifting from passive to active learning. (Oh, do I understand the “just one more article…” dilemma!) I think my inner perfectionist tends to be very aware of where I fall short in my skills, and I have trouble setting that aside long enough to do the practice, teach the writing muscles, make peace with the messy. If I can just get started, on any given day, and set all that aside, I’m better off. And every day that’s a bit of a battle, especially when I am working on that rough draft.
With craft books (versus online articles that catch my attention–ooh, shiny!), I’ve been trying to pick them up when I am NOT actively drafting. Just this month I’ve set aside my current WIP for a couple weeks to get some distance/perspective, and so I read a book I had waiting on the shelf. Now the book’s read, and in another week or so I will go back and review the WIP. I’m hoping by then I will have digested the story ideas so I can use them, work on those skills, and–most important–tune back into what my story and characters need now.
Alisha, so you allow yourself to read articles while drafting but save books (and presumably courses, if you take them), for the times between active writing? Sounds like a sensible rhythm to me.
As for perfectionism and fear… for those of us with significant levels of anxiety, it’s all about the art of the restart, isn’t it? If we can only begin it’s never as bad as we anticipate.
The art of the restart–I love that phrase! Being comfortable with “good enough” is its own skill, and doing things like yoga are help me train that part of my brain.
Yes, I save the larger bits (mostly books, sometimes courses) for transition times, though it’s not 100%. I sometimes set aside the articles too, but then I end up with a nifty backlog. ;-) It’s taken me a while to find that rhythm, but partly I’m just protecting that inner voice and the thread of story that can get drowned out. Once I’m revising I still have to listen to the voice, but I’m less like the hypochondriac who thinks she may have every disease she reads about! I guess, to use Barry’s term, at that point I can use my critical thinking skills to best effect.
Heh. A good analogy.
Loved your post, Jan. I guess I’m somewhere in the middle–having read lots of articles about writing, but very few books. I have taken classes over the years and I think they helped me understand the process of writing a novel–opened my eyes to what lies underneath, the foundation, things that a person who is simply READING FOR PLEASURE might not notice. But the plethora of opinion about writing that is found on internet blogs is way out of control. So I mostly avoid those, except being here, so that I can stop confusing myself with opinions and do what I want to do–WRITE.
Beth, so you’ve taken the moderation route and it sounds like it works for you? Well done.
Wonderful article! This one is worth reading for the self-examination alone, for the encouragement to check in and see if we’re actively learning or procrastinating. Sometimes we have to realize it’s time to send our work out into the world and write the next thing.
That being said, Serbella McGee brings up a vital point in her comment. Make sure to check out the experience of the guru, especially if that guru is asking you for money. Sadly there ARE way too many people out there these days proclaiming that they have the secret, the one way, the true path to writing and publishing glory. And far too many of them have little or no experience. It’s far easier to learn how to put together an online class or book and market it than to teach writing.
Another troublesome sort of guru in writing is the person how has had a bit of success, but for whatever reason, they stopped writing and moving forward a long time ago. I’ve run across a few of these, online and in person. Unfortunately, these folks can tend to pass along their fears along with their experiences. When those experiences turned bad, the teacher spends too much time talking about how tough, how scary, how soul-crushing it is to keep moving forward. Unless you’re strong enough to say no and move forward anyway (usually moving away from the guru), it’s far too easy to stay trapped there for ages, drowning in that fear.
As with so many things, buyer beware. And write on! :)
Kari, all good points.
There’s an author I adore. If I could pick one voice to adopt as my own, I’d probably choose this person’s. (Yes, I’m deliberately occluding their sex.) They even teach writing–to good effect, if their students are to be believed.
But I’ve had to steer clear and unsubscribe from their blog because of the psychological and procedural knots they have themselves tangled up in. It was a wrenching decision because I so enjoy their work. But it was necessary for my writing because their fears are too close to mine and they were amplifying my concerns rather than diminishing them. Sometimes we have to be prepared to leave.
I loved Kumare. Great post today.
I can’t say I loved it, but it was a profound learning experience for me. Thanks, Barbara.
What a fantastic post. “That way, if we ever find success–good–it is ours, and if we find failure–good–that is ours, too.” Yes and yes! And Kumaré sounds fascinating. That’s going on my watch list, for sure.
Annie, if you watch it and want to chat after, please drop me a line. I’d love to hear what you thought of it.
It took me three years to finish my first fiction manuscript. I spent a lot of time reading craft books, looking for, if not the One True Way, at least some hints, tips and techniques I could use to improve my writing and, more importantly, my writing process.
After all, I come from an entrepreneurial background. I’ve run a small business for more than 20 years. During that time, I’ve read craft and industry books in my field, watched countless webinars, attended conferences, had mentors and coaches. All of that helped me refine my business processes and procedures, create systems, and keep my skills updated in the ever-changing field of web development.
It took me those three years of writing fiction to learn to STOP reading craft books in the hopes of finding my system, my process. I’ve learned a tidbit or two from most of them, but there isn’t one book, one author, one mentor, that I can say truly drives me to write the way I do today.
Now I read craft books more for the insight they give me into SOMEONE ELSE’S creative process than for the possibility they might influence my own.
And this next manuscript? Going much faster, thanks.
Win, that last ‘graph is encouraging. Here’s hoping the same will be true of me. ;)
From the bit I know of you, you’re a fantastic mixture of read-aim-fire and fire-read-aim. Supposedly that’s the ideal learning style because it incorporates the strengths of both worlds while minimizing the weaknesses.
And an interesting distinction between why you read books on process now versus the usual tack. Thanks.
Hey, Jan:
I partially agree with SK, that your best teachers are the writers you admire. But you can only learn so much through passive reading. You do need to know what questions to ask and what to look for while reading.
I think this is what writing guides are useful for–identifying the areas one must know about to write well: structure, characterization, pacing, dialog, etc.
But it’s only in applying those questions and concepts both in one’s reading and also one’s writing that the learning process truly begins.
Rote obedience to a method, any method, creates formulaic writing.
The more useful approach is to say, “So-and-so advises this.” Then go to a book that has been an inspiration to you and see how the principle applies in practice (if at all).
This also prevents one from contracting guru-itis, because you’re obliged to teach yourself on the basis of writers you already admire.
Intriguing, thought-provoking post.
David, if guru-itis were a real disease, I’m convinced it would be accompanied by a weeping, crusty rash.
Personally, I don’t ever feel I’ve really understood something until I can teach it–thus having the concepts internalized–as well as perform it repeatedly.
I am concentrating on writing at the moment.
I have been very lucky in finding some terrific writing instructors-gurus. Without them it would have taken me much longer to learn all that I have. I am grateful.
People say that those who can’t, teach. But actually, they CAN write, they DO write, AND they teach. Not everyone can teach. Teaching is a very special occupation. My past instructors of poetry, fiction and non-fiction will always matter very much to me.
Tina, I hope you didn’t understand me to be saying that there is no place for writing instruction, because that wasn’t my intent! I come from a family of educators: grandfather, grandmother, aunt, mom, dad, brother. Even me, at one point in time.
Good teachers are invaluable. They also have their limits, that’s all. We all need to know when it’s time to develop our competence via experience rather than observation.
Hello. I didn’t think that you were against instruction. I used this opportunity to make a statement that I should have made a few years ago here at WU. I would have said that teachers can and do write in response to a comment made to me, but by the time I realized what I should have done it was past the comment deadline.
Gotcha. I’m all for that. Just wanted to make sure I hadn’t left you with a false impression. :)
Jan, I have read lots of writing craft books (and because I am a masochist, many grammar books too). Because I just can’t bear having another psychological syndrome to carry around—cognitive dissonance sounds like a colon condition—I have found something of value in most of them. But it’s true that I’ve spent as much time reading about writing as having written, and that’s too large of a proportion these days.
I’m saying no to more classes, books, webinars and conferences than ever before. However, I am still an acolyte of Sri Baba Maass and other craft gurus of WriterUnboxed, because they speak with the divine flame. Or the hot coffee cup.
Bent Guy, how about I leave the masochism-by-grammar territory to you?
You see how it goes? One moment we vow to practice guru-abstinence, the next we can only hope for guru-harm-reduction. The WU. It is rife with temptation.