Jessica Russell's Blog - Posts Tagged "training"
Wanting to VS. Knowing How
Writing and education are topics I rarely address because they can erupt so quickly into heated arguments. I've met many people who want to write for a living. They may have a novel in mind or their goal may be to work for a newspaper, magazine, or other publication. Naturally, I agree it's a wonderful ambition. However, wanting to do it and knowing how to do it are two different things.
I met a young lady one time who showed me a poem she wrote and the raw creative talent literally jumped off the pages. Unfortunately, she had "there," "they're" and "their" mixed up. Enough said. Sadly, instead of taking my advice, which I rarely give, she reacted with a bit of a chip-on the-shoulder attitude and informed me that you can't "teach someone to have talent," and therefore further schooling was unnecessary.
Actually, she's right and she's wrong. You absolutely can't teach someone to be gifted. You can't teach a person to have talent if no natural talent is there, and you can't teach creativity. Nevertheless, you CAN teach someone how to take their skills, gifts, and talents and use them to their best advantage. With writing, this can't be done without an education. You can have all the raw talent in the world, but the minute the editor sees the "there," "they're" and "their" issue, he or she won't bother to read another word. I'm sure I don't have to explain why.
THAT'S the difference between wanting to do something and knowing HOW. Some people have an outstanding aptitude for math, but unless someone shows them the steps and the formulas, the numbers don't mean anything and the raw talent will go forever unrealized. Some people would make exceptional athletes, but without someone showing them how to do the jumps and the twirls and the spins, they're probably only going to end up with a broken ankle when they hit the uneven bars.
No one likes to take the long road these days, but for some careers you absolutely MUST have a certain level of education, and writing is one of them. A friend of mine described a book once that was so horrible she didn't know what to say. Unfortunately it was written by a friend of HERS. I finally asked to look at it and after three tries I couldn't get past the midway point. It had fragmented sentences, punctuation problems, misspellings, and so many issues with the dialogue that some parts I had to read three times to figure out who was speaking. Now, ALL books have typos. Even the "greats." Primarily because editors now use software to catch all the mistakes, and software doesn't catch all mistakes. Enough said there. However, this wasn't a software problem, this was just simply someone who didn't know how to write.
Sadly, this writer has three books on Amazon and the last time I looked (just out of morbid curiosity) a customer had said in a review "I really wanted to love this book, but it was so full of sentence structure problems, juvenile dialogue, and punctuation issues that I couldn't get past the second chapter. Readers like me pay good money for books and we expect that at least the author would polish their craft before putting it out there for people to spend money on."
YIKES!
Yet the book was still there several months later. Honestly, after a review like that, the writer should have removed it and had someone edit it or waited until she could afford to hire someone to do so. I can only think maybe she had the same attitude as my poet friend I met all those years ago. In other words, thinking it's okay the way it is and it's just everyone else picking on her.
Sometimes those critiques need to be taken seriously. The bottom line is, I would never try to talk someone out of trying to become a writer, but no matter WHO you are, you DO need some type of formal training to make sure you know how to do it before you put yourself out there as an author. It's kind of like those crazy American Idol auditions. The people who couldn't sing will live on in infamy on YouTube forever and who wants to be known for making a fool out of themselves? I know that sounds harsh, but it's not nearly as harsh as the criticism you'll get if you try to do something that you clearly don't how to do. You also won't get anywhere in your career, which is the whole point of you wanting to write. There is no shortcut on this one. Sorry. Write on!
I met a young lady one time who showed me a poem she wrote and the raw creative talent literally jumped off the pages. Unfortunately, she had "there," "they're" and "their" mixed up. Enough said. Sadly, instead of taking my advice, which I rarely give, she reacted with a bit of a chip-on the-shoulder attitude and informed me that you can't "teach someone to have talent," and therefore further schooling was unnecessary.
Actually, she's right and she's wrong. You absolutely can't teach someone to be gifted. You can't teach a person to have talent if no natural talent is there, and you can't teach creativity. Nevertheless, you CAN teach someone how to take their skills, gifts, and talents and use them to their best advantage. With writing, this can't be done without an education. You can have all the raw talent in the world, but the minute the editor sees the "there," "they're" and "their" issue, he or she won't bother to read another word. I'm sure I don't have to explain why.
THAT'S the difference between wanting to do something and knowing HOW. Some people have an outstanding aptitude for math, but unless someone shows them the steps and the formulas, the numbers don't mean anything and the raw talent will go forever unrealized. Some people would make exceptional athletes, but without someone showing them how to do the jumps and the twirls and the spins, they're probably only going to end up with a broken ankle when they hit the uneven bars.
No one likes to take the long road these days, but for some careers you absolutely MUST have a certain level of education, and writing is one of them. A friend of mine described a book once that was so horrible she didn't know what to say. Unfortunately it was written by a friend of HERS. I finally asked to look at it and after three tries I couldn't get past the midway point. It had fragmented sentences, punctuation problems, misspellings, and so many issues with the dialogue that some parts I had to read three times to figure out who was speaking. Now, ALL books have typos. Even the "greats." Primarily because editors now use software to catch all the mistakes, and software doesn't catch all mistakes. Enough said there. However, this wasn't a software problem, this was just simply someone who didn't know how to write.
Sadly, this writer has three books on Amazon and the last time I looked (just out of morbid curiosity) a customer had said in a review "I really wanted to love this book, but it was so full of sentence structure problems, juvenile dialogue, and punctuation issues that I couldn't get past the second chapter. Readers like me pay good money for books and we expect that at least the author would polish their craft before putting it out there for people to spend money on."
YIKES!
Yet the book was still there several months later. Honestly, after a review like that, the writer should have removed it and had someone edit it or waited until she could afford to hire someone to do so. I can only think maybe she had the same attitude as my poet friend I met all those years ago. In other words, thinking it's okay the way it is and it's just everyone else picking on her.
Sometimes those critiques need to be taken seriously. The bottom line is, I would never try to talk someone out of trying to become a writer, but no matter WHO you are, you DO need some type of formal training to make sure you know how to do it before you put yourself out there as an author. It's kind of like those crazy American Idol auditions. The people who couldn't sing will live on in infamy on YouTube forever and who wants to be known for making a fool out of themselves? I know that sounds harsh, but it's not nearly as harsh as the criticism you'll get if you try to do something that you clearly don't how to do. You also won't get anywhere in your career, which is the whole point of you wanting to write. There is no shortcut on this one. Sorry. Write on!
