Hi Amanda,

In "Letters to a young poet", Rilke writes: "There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."

Is writing a craft that can be taught in schools? A style isn't it something very personal, very characteristic? And writing isn't it all about style? Police stations are full of stories, Justice courts, hospitals and streets are full of stories. But styles, how many? A handful per generation.

Who except Stendhal can dissect Mme de Renal's imperceptible feeling motions with such precision, such exactitude? Who else depicts otherness with such empathy and veracity as Paul Bowles? How many can make "The old man and the sea" out of after all very little material. These are styles.

Can we learn this in schools?

Hicham.

A remark, the word "style" is a very interesting one, because if we expand the word to include not simply writing, but a general way of being, certainly on the one hand there are very few people with a definite "style," certainly very few people who are extremely original. And yet, when rather than taking the eagle's-eye view one walks about in the city looking at others, styles are everywhere in their many variations, indeed if one looks closely enough each person has a style of living, a way of being, which is quite uniquely theirs.

It is perhaps like walking around a landscape, where there are certain dominant features, but at the same time incredible intricacy if one looks closely.

To tie these remarks to the comments above, I would say that when we see people who are really great, we perhaps tend to assume that they are simply acting naturally, and expressing their inmost nature without artifice. It is easy to forget the enormous amount of work and discipline which goes into such an effort, such a performance. Most people one sees on the street are "acting naturally," and the effect is not anywhere as strong, even though on closer look many people really do have something quite original to contribute. Like Rilke suggests, perhaps we have to go deeply enough into ourselves to find an enormous motivation for the difficult work discipline requires. But even though many artists speak of their work as flow and inspiration, the meticulous and repetitive development of technique is extremely important.

There was an article in some publication about 3 months ago in regards to the American creative writing program. The article directed our attention to writing classes all around the country. It pointed first to the teachers, most of whom are graduate students taking classes themselves. The point the article made that it is a silly system. The system is predicated on a roundtable dissemination of a student's work. The student writes something, hands out 10 or 15 copies to however many other would-be writers are in the class as well as the teacher. (Most creative writing teachers in the country are as unsuccessfully published as their students) The workshop system does two things: it forces you to write, and it forces you to sit silently while what you wrote is torn into pieces. And in forcing students to actually turn something in on time, the program succeeds. But in creating writers? No. I don't think it does.

Writing is not something that can be taught by one person unto the next. It is an entirely independent journey by the artist through his relationships with the external world. Perhaps a creating writing class can introduce a writer to the idea of editing and workshopping, but as to affecting his or her stylistic approach to the world through prose, I doubt there would be much influence. I took a creative writing class once where the teacher issued us some book by a creative writing teacher. The author of that book has never published anything else, he is a lifetime creative writing counselor. In the book he recommended the writer take more classes. He said write about something you don't know very well, experiences you've never had. Writing is an experiential practice, without a relationship (a very conscious one at that) with the exterior world, the writer is in no position to write. (Experiences of course don't need to be physical)  How one man who has never experienced the publication of a book beyond the subject of creative writing has the nerve to recommend more creative writing classes at the expense of actual living is beyond me.

I don't think writing can be taught in the classic sense. That is not to say that we can't learn and teach ourselves how to be better writers, or writers at all. But don't expect to enroll in a creative writing class and graduating with a best seller. If anything, writing classes should be entirely predicated on reading and thinking about writing. They should be studies of the art of writing, not on the art of your own writing.