When you work at a college and travel in academic circles you come across quite a few people for whom teaching is a distant plan B from plan A (writing), some of whom—not many, thankfully—make perfectly clear that their fondness for plan B is no greater than plan Q.  I find this genuinely sad.  While storytelling is my prime passion and writing my medium for expression, and I consider these my profession, in many ways the opportunities I have to teach are just as important to me.  In some ways, certainly more important. 

Thursday night I was reminded of this when I spoke to a chapter of the League of Utah Writers.  I talked about networking, and people participated by asking questions, sharing stories, and making comments and recommendations.  Like just about every instructional event I do, it was constructive and fun for me, as I hope it was others.  I don’t have to try very hard to hope that, though, because of the expressions of appreciation and gratitude that followed the presentation, that night, here on my blog, and elsewhere.  It’s very easy to convince yourself you’ve done something helpful when other people tell you so.  And I can’t recall a single workshop or panel I’ve ever participated in that people haven’t thanked me for.  I share this not merely to acknowledge the many kind people I get to meet, but to admit I’m just beginning to see how important this all is to my advancement as a writer.  I don’t mean by broadening my name recognition and interest in my writing, though that is certainly true as well; for me, teaching others is a large part of what makes the writer’s life—my life—happy.

There are pitfalls for writers, like any artist, some darker and deeper than others.  Addiction to self-destructive vehicles of distraction is always nearer than we think.  Every good story goes places that no healthy person would ever want to travel emotionally; to get the story there, the writer has to go  as well, if only in their mind.  It’s no wonder that individuals who emotionally confront the darker aspects of human experience rather than retreat from them sometimes cope unhealthily.  But not every pit is so insidious.  Some, like feelings of rejection and loneliness, are common to all humans.  It’s just that, for writers, these pits are so broad it’s incredibly difficult—if not impossible—to avoid them for much of your life. 

Writing is, mostly, a solitary art.  So is the contemplation it involves, the ruminating and daydreaming and asking yourself innumerable questions to which you have no answers.  Success doesn’t change that.  In a way, it only makes it worse.  There is a special kind of loneliness in fame (a supposition of mine, as I’m as far from famous as one can get); in being marked and noted by mobs of people, none of whom know you at all beyond the brand you’ve come to embody.  There is no escape, not completely.  When you decide to become a writer, to do it full-hearted and regardless of cost or condition, you reconcile yourself to being a lonesome kind of person.  Rejection is just as inescapable.  In a flux so great as that of written story, where every person has the potent birthrights of language and narrative affinity; where these potentials tie together into a unique, subjective, and lovely snarl that we call a person;  where mastery is so impossible you may write your whole life and send your skill not a jot higher but only sideways—in such a place, how can any of us expect to write and not be rejected, under appreciated, and misunderstood?  It’s a great and terrible truth that every person is a mystery, even to one’s self.  When we bump against each other in passing there is zero chance that our rough edges will always fit together.  The best work we will ever do—could ever do—will not please all people.  Sometimes when it does not, we will hear about it.  We will hear. 

Agents, editors, those who publish our work to world, they don’t want to reject us.  But they will.  Many, many times, they will.  

We don’t desire to be away from people, alone and apart, to make our stories breathe.  But we will be.  For too much of our lives, we will be.

We can’t help but feel these things.  I certainly can’t.  Which is why, as much as any other reason, I love to teach.  It fills my writer’s life with those things it so desperately lacks: society instead of solitude; mutual edification rather than private refinement; gratitude and immediate returns rather than form letters, criticisms, and the hollow ticking of the clock.  If you are like me, a writer and storyteller for better and worse, then I offer one heartfelt suggestion: share that.  Teach.  Find something you know and do well and help others to know and do it too, still their way, only a little better than before.  I have no doubts that your career, your quality of life, and your entirety of person will all improve if you do.

Thursday’s signing/workshop went off just fine, with the workshop, not surprisingly, being more fine than the signing. I have a lot of experience teaching and I really enjoy it, especially in workshop format where there’s a lot of exchange back and forth. But no complaints about the event as a whole. Sold some books for B&N; met some nice people there, including their fine CRM Michelle Sargent, whom I’d only spoken with on the phone previously; saw lots of friends and made a few new ones. The workshop was on characterization as the key to multi-fuction story, and those in attendance were enthusiastic and wonderful participants. We had a number of great discussions, including an interesting adventure into how to categorize plot vs character driven stories, and whether we even should.

For those who weren’t there (and didn’t have important meetings, other events to attend, or car trouble, and I know of instances of all three of these that kept people away), shame on you.  Here’s a sample of what you missed: the secret of what 3 things actually make story, which it seems to me writers had better know; when and why sunshine isn’t always sunny even if it’s bright; why the crime and punishment in Dostoyevsky’s novel has little to do with the murder in the story; opinions on R.A. Salvatore’s melee combat play-by-play; the notion of emotive “flags”; the confirmation of Neil Gaiman’s theory that airports aren’t distinct places at all but rather a generic type of place common to many actual places (read American Gods for more on this); and much interchange on smells, the value of nasty ones, and how much to include in our stories (I say the more and the worse the better). 

My one real regret is that I forgot to use my chaste marriage metaphor.  Well, that’ll give all of you who missed Thursday a reason to come in the future, won’t it.

A few days ago Scarlet Knight (now to be known as Carolyn, who is a very nice lady I met in person last week) asked this:

Okay, Clint I have a question for you, and you can answer it any time. You mentioned that you focus in on a writing area you want to improve on and then work on it until it is better. I am curious about the whole process you take with this. As a writer, I want to improve upon my writing and am wondering the best way to do this. Thanks! =)

This doesn’t seem to need an entire essay, so I’ll answer you here on this post, Carolyn (and who says that’s less rocking than Scarlet?).  So, my basic methodology for improving my writing.  Hmm.  I guess it would go something like this…

I just wrote the methodology I used to improve my writing skill and deleted it.  Really, I got to step seven and realized that what I’d written, while perhaps witty, wouldn’t do anyone reading this the least amount of good whatsoever.  So instead of telling you things I’ve tried, I will tell you what I eventually found worked for me and what I suggest others do.

1) Read.  It seems simple, but this is where you have to start.  You read not so much to acquire skill with language (though that’s vital too) but because reading trains your mind into the method of story and communication.  It also lets you into particular discourse communities.  What I mean by this is that different groups have different versions of language; a teenage daughter and her middle-aged father both speak English (or Dinka or whatever), but they don’t speak the same English.  Similarly, readers of traditional romance novels speak a different language (a symbolic system for communicating thought and concept) than readers of epic fantasy.  It is only by reading within a genre, contemporarily and classically, than we as writers can become fluent in the ideas, values, and shared meanings of our readers.  If you don’t read (and engage in other forms of story consumption), you never acquire the storyteller’s taste.  If you don’t read in the genre in which you’ll write, you do not understand your reader, so you can’t create a meaningful experience for her.  (This all stems from reader response literary theory, which isn’t all that complicated but I don’t have time to cover it here.  Just remember this: your reader will take your text and build their own version of the story.  If the pieces you give them are too alien or old hat, they cannot build a treasured final product.  You need to know your reader to give them narrative material they can build with.)

2) Write.  This seems as simple as #1, but it’s just as important.  To develop skill writing, you can’t spend all your time researching or reading books on technique and composition, or reading, or revising past works.  The fact is, every one of us has a lot of bad writing in us before we reach the well of good stuff.  The only way to get through the bad is to spew it out.  Writing lets you find your voice, which essentially means the style that most effectively communicates your perspective to others in a meaningful way.  You have to search to find this, and so any writing that communicates to others is helpful.  Write letters, and journal entries, and essays, and short stories, and poetry, and anything else you might conceivably show another person.  Any time you write something with the intent of being read, you develop your skill.  With that established, here are some sub-points about writing:

• 2a) Write the form you most want to write.  Mostly, this means novels, as far more writers aspire to be novelists than essayists of short story writers.  You’d be surprised, then, how many spend little or no time writing in the form they aspire to make their career in.  If you want to write novels, write novels and finish them.  Perfecting three chapters can’t make you a novel writer.  Writing one crappy novel, beginning to end, is far better.  Likewise, if you want to write short stories, write them.  Or essays, or poetry, or whatever.  Write what you want to publish, and devote as much time as possible to writing in this form.
• 2b) Write in other forms.  If you want to be a novelist, don’t avoid writing short stories.  Try poetry.  Write in a number of different forms, from 100,000 novels to 250 flash pieces to on-the-fly blog posts.  Write in a number of different rhetorical situations and you’ll learn that each demands something a little—or a lot—different.  This will hammer into you the consideration of your audience and awareness of writing for rhetorical effect. 
• 2c) Use short works to experiment.  Novels are huge investments of time, so I encourage people to try new tactics and compositional choices in short works, such as stories or essays.  Another benefit of this is that a short work can be composed according to Poe’s “Unity of Effect,” meaning everything in the entire piece is in unified service to a single overriding principle or theme.  Thus, if you wanted to explore the potential of short, choppy sentences of description delivered in bunches (as I did in my short story “Modern Woman”), that choice becomes the dominant technique of the whole piece.  This makes it really easy to explore the possibilities of any one compositional element.  By writing a number of short works specifically designed to develop techniques, you can focus greatly on each tool in the toolbox (King’s metaphor), improve it, and then adopt it into your ever-evolving skill, style, and voice.
• 2d) However you experiment with your voice and style, make sure you consciously develop the following techniques: writing across the point of view spectrum (especially in first and third person, present and past tense, with third person close as well as more distant, and with a narrator of some sort—not omniscient); writing with little or no exposition; writing exposition in a way that is enjoyable (much harder to do than most think); writing from the perspective of adults and children, and people of different genders, classes, nationalities, etc.; writing the same scene from multiple points of view; writing a plot in a single point of view where the character is aware of things happening “off screen” as it were; writing a story that cannot be told from a single point of view; write in every different genre you’ve read in and has interested you; write fiction and non-fiction; write primarily dialogue; write primarily word-for-word thought; write primarily action; write both what is going to happen stories (dramas) and why/how did this happen stories (mysteries); write alliteratively; write without using alliteration; write using dialect; write in different time periods; finally, write anything you’ve never written before if it seems different, interesting, or intimidating. 
• 2e) Finally, write in imitation when you are starting out.  If you read someone whose writing you adore, copy it.  Really, word for word if you like.  I liked to try to write as much like them as I could, from diction to theme.  For example, most formally educated creative writers have a Hemmingway/Carver story somewhere in their history (including me, though I’m not a model of advanced education).  I also have Austin and Dickens stories, and even one Joyce story.  What draws you to writers is their strengths, and imitating them will change you in these areas.  You’ll never write like they do—though you may end up writing just as well or better.  You’ll find that as time goes on, you’ll find less and less of other people’s writing so fresh and new that you want to imitate it.  This isn’t because the writers out there are losing their touch; it’s because you’re gaining your’s, and you’re not as easy to impress as you once were.  At this point, your own style will be mature enough that it isn’t affected by the gravity of the larger planets in the system of literature. 
• 2f) Most importantly, don’t ever be satisfied with your writing before you’ve agonized over it.  If you write without really caring about producing your best work, it doesn’t sharpen your skill.  This is the difference between most aspiring writers and those who are destined to make it: whether or not they waste time.  If you write five books, always straining for your very best, your fifth book will be vastly better than your first.  I promise.  If you write fifty books in satisfaction, the fiftieth will, for all intents and purposes, be the first book.  Demand that you improve your skills.

3) Learn at the theoretical level.  Whether you take classes at colleges and universities (where you must promise never to let anyone dictate to you what is or is not “good writing”) or read books on writing (this is how I learned), take the experience of others and learn from it.  Try to develop a keen understanding of writing, and language, and story, and the business of publishing.  All of these will one day evolve into active knowledge or the knowledge of practice, but understanding the theory and concept is helpful as well.  Don’t every take anything you hear as law.  The only writing rules (with a few exceptions) that are truly sacrosanct are the ones that work for you.  Thus drink deeply of the methodology you hear from others, but only adopt and internalize what you find works for you through experimentation and your own sense of objective.

4) Critique other writers.  While being critiqued is helpful, especially when you start out, training your critical eye is most important.  When you are in a critique group, learn to be honest and astute in your feedback without being overtly critical.  Learn to recognize the difference between what isn’t working and what isn’t your favored style or voice.  When you find something that isn’t working for you, demand that you figure out why.  Don’t take the position that certain things are just bad or good; think in terms of effect.  What compositional choice in the writing produced an undesirable result?

5) Join writing groups.  Associating with people with the same interests is important for reinforcement, encouragement, and networking.  Often these groups sponsor lectures and workshops that can be very helpful.  The more interconnected your approach to developing your writing skill (meaning the more ways you approach your evolution as a writer), the more likely you are to develop.

6) Don’t attach yourself too greatly to any one piece of writing.  Your objective should be to become a master writer and storyteller (even if we never reach this level, it must always be the ultimate goal), not to write the next great American novel.  Never, ever conceptualize your skill and identity in terms of a single work.  Your foremost goal should always be developing yourself and your skill, which will mean moving on from one project to the next.  Don’t devote ten years to perfecting one manuscript, because it won’t happen.  Write ten good manuscripts in ten years, and I promise you the tenth will be better than the first ever could have been, no matter how much work you put in.

7) Set your goals.  Decide what it is you want from your writing.  Then look at all the other options that this will cost you.  You want to publish and make money?  You’ve given up your right to total control of your creative endeavors.  Want to write a niche subject that fascinates you?  Understand that your chances of living off your writing, no matter its quality, is almost nil.  Whenever we truly make up our minds on something we discard other options.  Ours is a culture that values having many options, and likes to pretend that they all are equal.  You cannot do this if you want to truly develop as a writer.  You need to decide what it is you really want, accept that you’ll have to give up some things to get this, and then pursue it with all your vigor and ability. 

Lastly) Defy discouragement and complacency.  The only way we ever stop developing is to give up, either entirely or abandoning the rigor that refines us from a lesser ability to greater advancement.  The moment writing becomes easy, in any aspect, you can be certain you’ve stopped developing.  Don’t aspire to comfort; seek improvement.  Satisfaction in writing should always be “this is as good as I can do right now, so I’ll move on to a new challenge and new learning experience.”  In short, never lose the need to be and do better.   

I hope there’s something in here that helps, Carolyn—and anyone else reading this.  If you have questions or want clarification, please comment.  I can’t stress this enough: I believe almost every single person has the capacity to publish.  Writing skill is learned through work and dedication; it isn’t a matter of raw talent.  I know Stephen King disagrees with me.  Many others do as well.  But I am confident that through good old hard work, the people who read this can develop professional level writing skills.  That’s a promise.  I take comfort in this is because, in the long run, I control my own destiny.  The reason I’ll be successful is I can outwork my competition.  Any of you that can do the same will have success as well.  It’ll be nice to meet and share old stories from the top of the hill.  See you there.