Here’s something stunning. (Also angry, and true, and unapologetically on the money.)
‘I despair that instead of learning to be admirable readers - the first step in becoming a decent writer - these misguided souls might merely be mastering the technical tricks of the narrative trade, and barking them out like contestants at a dog show, with a sole eye to marketability.’
That is Francine du Plessix Grey, in 1994, railing against creative writing programmes and the people who were herded into them.
I love it because it is so cross. That barking at a dog show is filled with unrestrained fury.
I love it because it’s not just about writing. I mean: she absolutely did write it about writing; it was for a compilation called The Writing Life. But the underlying principle holds for anything that is wonderful and worth doing well.
The things that are wonderful and worth doing well do not rely on technical tricks, or the dog show line-up meant to please the judges, or the exigencies of the market. The wonderful and the worth doing should - could, can - exist for their own glorious sake.
We don’t need the technical tricks so that the market will take us to its heart. We need soul. We writers, I mean, and we modern humans, and all of of who mind about love and trees and perhaps finding the meaning in things. I think probably most people. Because if you love something and take the time to learn to do it well, it won’t be because of the facile tricks and tips and shortcuts and overpromises; it will be because of doing something like learning to be an admirable reader.
It’s doing the groundwork. It’s taking the time. It’s not cutting corners or faking it or trying to be better than one is. It’s doing the hard yards.
Something in du Plessix’s crossness has touched something in me. She is bolder than I am and I love her for that. She is not a writer I know, but I’ll go and look for her now. Whoever she is and whatever else she wrote, she is right about this, and she states it plainly. She makes me want to try harder and rise higher, and that is always a lovely feeling.