teaching writing

Recently, Ryan Boudinot wrote an essay for The Stranger titled “Things I Can Say About MFA Writing Programs Now That I No Longer Teach in One“. Among other things, he observed:

Either you have a propensity for creative expression or you don’t. Some people have more talent than others. That’s not to say that someone with minimal talent can’t work her ass off and maximize it and write something great, or that a writer born with great talent can’t squander it. It’s simply that writers are not all born equal. The MFA student who is the Real Deal is exceedingly rare, and nothing excites a faculty adviser more than discovering one. I can count my Real Deal students on one hand, with fingers to spare.

This is, in my opinion, wrong-headed, elitist, and insulting. Other people have replied eloquently. Chuck Wendig said:

This is one of the worst, most toxic memes that exists when it comes to writers. That somehow, we slide out of the womb with a fountain pen in our mucus-slick hands, a bestseller gleam in our rheumy eyes. We like to believe in talent, as if it’s a definable thing “” as if, like with the retconned Jedi, we can just take a blood test and look for literary Midichlorians to chart your authorial potential. Is talent real? Some genetic quirk that makes us good at one thing, bad at another? Don’t know, don’t care.

Are you putting words on the page? Then you are doing it right.

You may not be creating publishable words. You may not be creating amazing words. You may not be creating words you like. But by creating words, you are doing something actual, tangible, verifiable. And that puts you ahead of all the people who aren’t writing.

Someone once said to me at a party, “I would write, but I need to conquer some inner demons first.” And honestly — in my opinion, that’s bullshit unless he was talking about the inner demon of procrastination and not just being a pretentious jackass. Because, come on – who says that kind of thing and takes themself seriously?

Writers just fucking write.

Do you need to send stuff out? Do you need to polish what you’ve produced? Do you need to promote your writing? Yes, and yes, and yes, but all of those things are dependent on having written.

Let me reiterate this, because it’s important. Writing always comes first.

When I teach, we do a lot of writing exercises. And I hear people say, just before they read what they’ve produced, “I’m not sure I did this right.” And then they go on and read me something wonderful. Maybe it’s not exactly what I was envisioning when I came up with the exercise. Maybe they’ve turned the exercise on its head and done something completely different. But that’s okay. The only way they could do the exercise wrong, in my opinion, is to not do it.

I have seen stories workshopped that were…sometimes difficult to say much about. Some are seared on my memory; others kept me up at night trying to figure out what to say. Some were politically a bit problematic. But you know what? At least they got written.

If you are writing, you are being a writer. If you keep at it — and think about writing and getting better — you will get better. There are things you can do that will help you get better faster, but all of them depend on…well, you should know what I’m going to say here by now….writing.

If it’s fear of getting it wrong that’s stopping you, then knock it off. Here’s the reassurance you need. You cannot do it wrong.

Now go write some words.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.

We’ve all got a comfort zone, the place where we can function easily, where we know what to expect. It’s a nice place. It’s…well, it’s COMFORTABLE. Hence the name. It would be easy to stay there all the time.

But for writers, I think it’s very important to go outside it on a regular basis. For one thing, your characters are going to be outside their comfort zones, being challenged, tested, thwarted, more often than not, because one thing about comfort zones is that they can be pretty darn boring to read about. Who wants a character for which everything goes right? (This is, I will argue, why the Richie Rich comic books were pretty darn bland.) How can you write a character outside their comfort zone if you don’t know what it’s like?

And outside our comfort zone is where we learn new things, new skills, new things about ourselves. Here in Costa Rica, my Spanish skill is leaping upward in a way it wouldn’t at home, despite all my best resolutions about daily Duolingo workouts or buying books in Spanish from Amazon. And that in turn has prodded me to try some new things with it, like using one of my stories as a practice piece in translation.

This is why, when I talk to students about going into a workshop like Clarion West or Viable Paradise, I urge them to try to fail. Because you learn so much more from a story where you tried something new and failed than one where you did the same thing you always did. I wrote Zeppelin Follies while at Clarion West as my very first try at a screwball comedy, and I will confess that the first draft was a horrible mishmash of stuff. And boy did I learn a lot from that.

Fortunately, for the vast majority of writers, we like new things. New words, new vistas, new thoughts. And we find them outside that comfort zone, in a place that is frightening and exhilarating all at once. Whizzing along a zipline, diving into waters over our head, talking to strangers. If you doubt that you are brave enough to do such things, remember that you do something braver everyday by putting your writing out there for other people to look at.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.

I’ve been teaching online classes for a few years now. They have been awesome and one of the coolest things has been the number of talented writers I’ve had the privilege to work with. However, I’m scheduling a break from teaching during the latter half of 2014, and it’s for a few reasons.

The first and most important is that I can feel a little burnout creeping up around the edges. I’ll be talking in a class and think to myself, “I know I’ve said this before,” and it will be because I have said it before, repeatedly even — but not to that class. I can tell that if I don’t take a break, that feeling is going to drown me.

The second is to focus even more on the writing, because there’s at least two books I’d like to finish up this year, along with the usual roster of short stories. (I’m at ten completed so far this year, which is unusually productive but highly pleasing.)

The third is because I don’t want to get in a rut. I want to go think about some new things and then come back ready to talk about them to students.

So – if you want a class with me in 2014 — check out the list now. I’ll probably list a couple more conversation classes in June, but that’s it. But I’ll be back in 2015!