What Do You Know About Teaching Writing?
Get a bunch of novelists together and sooner or later the question arises. Can writing be taught?
Those who consider fiction writing an art say talent cannot be learned. You either have it or you don’t. Luck of the draw, baby. People are born to dance or paint portraits or create stained glass masterpieces. Storytelling is no different. The ability to create worlds out of pure imagination is innate, coded in DNA, like hair color and height, so don’t fool yourself into thinking you can learn the secret handshake. According to this point of view, only the mechanics can be taught. Punctuation and conjugation. Sentence structure and grammar. Natural born writers don’t need no stinkin’ writing program. All they have to do is write. That’s the secret. No matter how well-intentioned, no teacher can turn a sow’s ear into an award-winning novelist.
On the other side of the debate are those who consider writing a craft. They say, What? Of course writing can be taught. Any skill, from water skiing to bricklaying, can be taught to a willing pupil by a patient teacher. Constructing a novel is like building a bridge. All you need are the right 
materials and the proper tools to put the pieces together in an acceptable manner. Evidence of this conviction? The quantity of how-to-write books published each year and the fact that anyone can enroll in a writing class of some sort in just about every corner of the country. Cake decorating class full? There’s a seat left in Writing Your Novel.
I’ve taught professional writing for years. At the university level. Through a university independent study program, and in Continuing Ed courses for adults. I formed my opinion about whether writers are made or born after years of working with novice writers at every age and level of development. Here’s what I know about teaching writing.
Geneticists have not yet isolated the mutant maverick writing gene, but every good storyteller is born with the Gift. The Gift isn’t always the ability to write beautiful prose. The Gift is the desire to write. The determination to communicate with others through the written word. Writers are born observant. They love drama. They have a sense of humor and appreciate irony. They are happy living in their own heads and can get lost in the worlds they create. If they don’t write, they are not happy.
For someone born with the gift, not writing can be very self-destructive.
Writing students don’t have to know how to plot a story or create a character when they step into a classroom. But if they don’t have an overwhelming need to write, no class can turn them into a writer. They must be willing to confront fears and overcome doubts. And be honest about expectations. Talent is innate, but it is not fully formed at birth. Talent is shaped and nurtured to fruition. The drive to write cannot be taught. It is a fire that must be kindled. Writing teachers cannot set the fire. They can only fan the flames.
Mechanics can be taught, but writers don’t need classes in punctuation. Any good grammar book contains all a novice needs to know about comma placement. Teaching punctuation is a waste of a creative writing teacher’s time. Anyone who reads voraciously develops internal writing templates through osmosis. Anyone who doesn’t read voraciously will never become a writer.
Good teachers don’t teach students how to write. Good teachers help students understand what it means to be a writer. Big difference. As a teacher, I ask students why they want to write. I ask them why they so often do not. If a novice writer does not overcome the many obstacles in his path, all the natural, ingrown, untapped talent in the world will not guarantee success.
Success grows out of desire. When desire becomes passion, the rest will follow. A good writing teacher helps turn desire into passion.
In an extremely non-adaptive quirk of evolution, the most talented writers are often the most insecure. They don’t believe in themselves. They don’t trust their artistic instincts. Sometimes they aren’t even aware they possess artistic instincts. But all real writers do. That’s the Gift. The greater their potential to go far, the more plagued writers are by self-doubt. Their tender spirits crumble under harsh criticism. Shrivel in the face of indifference. Writers jump at any chance to deny the voice that tells them to write. To avoid the pain of rejection at all costs. Why? Because failing to fulfill the Gift is the worst thing they can imagine.
Conversely, the stronger the ego, the weaker the talent. Ego is a weed that crowds out budding talent. In my experience, the writers who have the most to learn are often the least willing to make the effort.
So where do I stand in the Can-Writing-Be-Taught debate?
Teaching writing isn’t just about lecturing students on plotting and characterization and pacing and point of view. These elements are important but can be learned through reading good novels and books on technique. Teaching writing is about helping students find the writer within and learning to trust that writer. To love that writer. Good teachers gently guide novice writers toward acknowledging how much their inner writer knows and how much must yet be learned.
Sitting alone in a room, staring at a computer screen for hours and weeks and months on end, putting black on white and despairing of one’s worth is no one’s idea of a good time. Real writers are those who can’t imagine doing anything else. They know putting black on white is the most important thing they can do.
A writing teacher’s job is to reassure students that wanting to sit alone in that room, creating worlds out of thin air and imagination, is quite a fine use of their time.