Love your expression, “an alarming array of skills,” Rusty. Very apt. Interestingly, just about everyone thinks they can write. I always enjoyed Margaret Atwood’s cocktail party comeback (when doctors told her they were going to start writing in retirement.) “I think I’m going to take up a little brain surgery on the side,” is what she used to say.

Your last question is particularly interesting, Charles. I don’t understand why (most) writers don’t practice in the way that musicians and dancers do.

For fiction, I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with plot? Books that are “page-turners” (e.g.: The Da Vinci Code) will get plenty of readers even if they are poorly written.

Thanks, Lesley!

I didn’t intend to suggest that writing, music or painting is just (or strictly) a matter of taste–I don’t believe that it is. I agree that some writers are better than others and that some writing is good and other writing is bad (really a continuous spectrum). I also agree that the overall level of musicianship is far higher, today, than it has ever been. The eminent critic Harold Bloom would agree with your assessment of Shakespeare as western literature’s greatest writer; in my opinion, that assessment–which writer is THE greatest ever–is a fool’s errand.

If you mean by the PROCESS of writing the process of mental and emotional preparation to approach the instrument and engage with it (in this case, the writing implement of choice), then I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of writing education as, sadly, excluding this critical aspect of producing a document. This aspect of writing seems to be left to informal working groups, and, even in many of such groups, the focus is on critical evaluation of work product.

To me, the other expressive arts (dance, music, acting, painting, sculpture, etc.) have focused on this particular aspect of their processes (e. g., “method” acting was first written down in Stanislavski’s book, “An Actor Prepares.”) and dancers, musicians and actors are clearly better, today, than, say 100 years ago (there are exceptions, of course–such historical figures whose work was at the highest level reached today as Liszt and Rachmaninoff, for example). Perhaps walking without objective is a form of preparation. Musicians, actors, dancers and athletes practice, rehearse or exercise; why not writers?

As a newsletter writer for my branch of fellow authors in California Writers Club, I face many writers with an alarming array of skills. They do need to practice and up their game when submitting to publishers or even self-publishing. But some seem to thing that writing for themselves is good enough. Some will hire a proofreader, some let their great aunt do it. It all comes down to practice and making all of our efforts worth reading. There are so many bad writers out in cyberspace that I wish they could all read the Deliberate Practice rules by Ericcson.

At least our credibility would look and read better.

I totally agree, Steve. All writing is re-writing. I feel as though I say this until I’m blue in the face… You’re also quite right that the pay for writing is getting worse all the time. But then, so is the pay for playing the piano, or making pottery or painting pictures. The creative arts don’t tend to pay very well and writers who seek their motivation in money are likely to be disappointed. (I agree that we’re in a particularly difficult phase now where we move from a society in which it USED to be possible to make a decent living as a non-fiction writer and now that is feasible for a much smaller number of people.)

I don’t see you an an Eeyore! Just be sure to separate the rules related to copy editing (e.g.: style rules) from the ones related to producing really top quality writing. To my mind, the latter is far more important.