The Problem With Writing Instruction

This is how I think it should feel, ideally, when we write

Jon and I were talking about music the other day.

We were talking about live music—how it is when people are making music together, what it’s like to watch them, and how it feels. This could be a street busker playing accordion like we saw on the Stone Arch Bridge high above the Mississippi after dark on Saturday night, how the old man played and sang in the glow of the bridge lights amid the walkers and bikers and too-fast scooter-riders, the clusters of young people laughing and shouting, the gorgeous runners and their dogs, the couples walking shoulder to shoulder because the temperature had dropped a bit more than expected. And there he was, the old busker, playing his accordion, moving his body with it, singing and singing into the night, swaying and nodding his head, swaying and nodding.

Or it could be an indie group playing in a cafe one night. You know, how their bodies move with their instruments and with the music and with each other, how they effortlessly watch each other, their eyes like water or wind, moving in time as they feel each other in the energy of the music and movement. It’s so beautiful how people’s instruments come to life when they’re being played—how the guitar seems animated somehow, as if it is not separate from the person playing it, but instead, part of them. Same with drums, piano, cellos (cellists are so beautiful when they play!), saxophones, whatever the instrument, it does not matter: it gets connected to and animated by its players and the players are connected to each other and anyone who listens gets connected, too, as the musicians play the music and feel the sound and feel each other’s movement and us, too, they feel us listening and responding to their music. The whole thing, the bodies and the instruments and the movement and the sound, it all becomes a single entity that exists in the world only once, in this finite stretch of a song.

A single entity that is entirely, luminously, and strangely alive.

This how I think it should feel, ideally, when we write.

It doesn’t have to be music, though. It could be dance. Same thing, the bodies moving, sometimes one lifting another, the way they have to feel for it. Athletes, absolutely. Feeling for it even as the game itself directs and redirects them, because the game, too, is alive and finite.

Probably anyone who has ever baked bread with any seriousness over any length of time knows it is the same with dough. How you learn to feel it. The dough is alive and your hands are alive and your hands are shaping the dough and the dough has its own resistance, its own shape and texture that changes as you knead, changes from sticky and shaggy to something smoother and more elastic, something firmer and more springy until eventually it is right, and you know this, because you feel it.

I’ve been seeing a ton of writing classes, webinars, intensives, workshops, and so forth popping up for registration recently, probably because fall is coming—so everywhere it’s like how to use verbs to show not tell, how to write dialogue, how to structure an essay, how to how to how to how to how to. And it’s interesting, because even though I teach writing and am about to announce three new opportunities to study with me this fall (a six-week Zoom WITD generative workshop, a special one-time intensive on writing what hurts, and an in-person, Friday - Monday manuscript revision workshop for memoir, so watch for details this Sunday), I find myself bristling a little at the onslought of instruction for sale.

When I find myself bristling, I usually try to practice RAIN—a buddhist thing. You recognize the feeling, accept it, investigate it, and then practice non-attachment. So when I recognized myself bristling and accepted it so that I could further investigate, what I realized is that for me—and this is a me thing—the “nuts and bolts” of writing craft, on their own, are at best not super useful and at worst potentially harmful to one’s development as an artist.

Why? Because the “nuts and bolts”—the how to how to how to how to of writing—is, as I have been saying in my bio since June of 2024, when I rewrote it for the Invisible Strings anthology—kind of boring without the larger conversation of how writing intersects with our development as whole human beings. Here’s the bio I’ve using:

For me, that larger philosophical conversation is not separate from or more important than or better than or primary to the nuts and bolts of literary craft. Instead, it is inseparable from the nuts and bolts of literary craft. They are two sides of the same coin.

For me, as a writer, curiosity about and attention to the world as a pathway to becoming a whole human being is intrinsically connected to language, becuase as I feel the world, I intuitively seek to articulate the world. This is the genesis of writing.

The truth is, my writing might improve marginally or even significantly if I articulate words and sentences according to these or those “rules” of craft or “formula” for a kickass essay or even if I just go through and convert all my adjectives to verbs so that the people in my writing show for themselves how they feel versus me telling you about it (that was actually a pretty good tip I saw out there last week, so, again, I am not opposed to writing instruction, I teach writing!).

However, none of those improvements, however large or small, if they arise solely from focusing on how to how to how to how to how to, will ever, in one billion years, wake my writing up and bring it to life, make it move and hide on the page, make it breathe and writhe and gasp and collapse at the knees sobbing on the stone tile in the half-light of August over the brutality of living and dying, and the ecstasy, too.

This is why I teach writing from the body up. The first thing is to open ourselves, body and mind (curiosity). The second thing is to be present (attention) with body and mind so that we can receive the world as it is, all of it: the oak bark and the stained cedar, the cold coffee with congealed cream, the dutchman’s pipe so thick and obsenely green out the window that it disappears the neighbor’s house, the unbearable sound of the air conditioner, the smell of shampoo, the stubble on Jon’s face, the scars on his hands. The third step is to articulate the world—let it speak through you.

This is what we mean when we say write the world, not write about the world. To write the world we have to fully experience it, which means to perceive it with all of the senses of the body. I start with the five major senses—that’s how my daily sensory incantation works—but we all know there are more. Like, proprioception, which allows us to “perceive the location,movement, and action of our body parts in space, without needing to visually confirm it.” Also, equilibrioception (sense of balance), thermoception (sense of temperature), nociception (sense of pain), and interoception (internal body sensations like hunger and thirst). And there are more. But, because some or most of these other senses bring our attention into the body, we start with the five major senses, which pull our attention outward. Why? Because we cannot know who we are in the world and who we are becoming, or find our place in the world, until we are able to first perceive the world as it is, perceive the truth of the world, in order to articulate some deeper truth of humanness.

To be honest, it’s very difficult to percieve the world truthfully and articulate it truthfully, too. It’s taxing. Most people don’t want to do it. It doesn’t, at first, anyway, feel “creative.” It feels—I am sorry to say this—limited, forced, and boring. Maybe, and I don’t know this for sure because I am not a musician, though my children all studied violin, but maybe it’s kind of like practicing scales over and over? Again, I don’t know for sure. But I do know people find it difficult at first, and, even later, we often find ourselves resisting this simple practice of perceiving the world as it is.

But if we maintain the practice, pairing clear, truthful language with our perceptions, something astounding begins to happen. The world and the things in it come alive. Every single thing comes alive. The chair comes alive. The white leather strips that form its woven seat come alive. The cow who once wore that leather as its hide comes alive. The paint on the chairlegs comes alive. The unbearably loud air conditioner comes alive.

It’s all alive.

You know this when you feel it. There is, to put it in the best term I can grasp for, a kind of quickening, where every single thing in the world animates itself and takes on meaning. A chair is a chair. It is also where her husband sat when he asked for the divorce. Now what is it? It’s a chair and it’s more than a chair. Same with the pillow still warm from my son’s head. Same with the oak tree with the giant scar where the snow storm broke off the branch, which was the size of a second trunk, and that happened right before she found out. It’s all alive with language and meaning. It wants to be perceived. It wants to be articulated. It wants to mean something.

But first we have to feel it.

To be honest, I find it hard to distill all this into a concise course description. That’s because it is not distillable. It is a lifetime process, an ongoing devotion. Fortunately, the benefits of the practice begin immediately. All we need to do is start, and things will begin to stir, even if we don’t yet notice. Some patience is needed, as with any art worth making.

And anyone who learns to write from this foundation of attention and truth will in turn be able to use craft principles in ways that are truthful to the meaning of the words of the world. On the other hand, craft principles applied on top like frosting or a Post-it Note or a silk bow will not bring the work to life. The sentence might be better. The image might in fact be stronger or even more visceral. But the work itself cannot quicken without our first experiencing the quickening of the world.

Once we do experience the quickening of the world and find the words quickening, too, all sorts of things will start happening because suddenly now things are speaking and making their meaning felt, things are, as I like to say, alive with metaphor, and we, in response, are opening ourselves to possibility, allowing things to move and change, allowing ourselves to try this and try that, to play by ear and take more risks and goof around with the sound and texture of velocity of words in order to find out what happens, just because.

We become like children learning the language all over again, rediscovering it with a sense of genuine awe for what words are and what they can do.

Love,

Jeannine

PS

Remember to watch for registration info for my upcoming writing workshops (oh, the irony) on Sunday. If you signed up for the waitlist for either WITD on Zoom or SCHOOL, you’ll get the info Saturday. Both the generative WITD on Zoom and the in-person revision intensive have limited space.

Also, please join us for our subversive gratitude practice based on Melody Beattie’s book, Make Miracles in Forty Days starting later this month!

This 40-day writing intensive is for paid subscribers, and you don’t need to register. A paid membership means you’ll get all the posts and have access to comments and the chat. If you’ve never participated in a Writing in the Dark intensive, they’re incredible. You work at your own pace in a community of other writers who are inspiring, encouraging, and engaged with the work and with each other.

Again, for the subversive gratitude practice, you do not need to register or sign up or anything extra—you need only to be a paid member and the intensive posts will come to you daily starting in late August (exact date TBD).

You can upgrade here anytime. Our creative community is extraordinary and we’d love to welcome you.

This one will be special.