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| The essential human act at the heart of writing is the act of giving. There's something implacable and irreducible about it: handing something to someone because you want her to have it; not asking for anything in return; and if it is a gift of yourself -- as writing always is -- risking that she won't like it or even accept it. Yet though giving can sound rare and special if you rhapsodize about it, it is of course just a natural and spontaneous human impulse. Dialogue in my head "Give it." "No." "You have to give it if you want to write." I don't want to give it. I'll loan it or disguise it or sell it even. I'll give it to certain people if they promise to like it -- or if they promise to suffer. But I won't just give it away." Dialogue with a student ME: That's good writing. You really looked it in the eye what you were writing about. STUDENT: I didn't used to respect writers. I thought they were just people who wrote things down easily. I didn't realize that writing took courage, took so much out of you. I don't like to give. The essential human act at the heart of writing is the act of giving. There's something implacable and irreducible about it: handing something to someone because you want her to have it; not asking for anything in return; and if it is a gift of yourself -- as writing always is -- risking that she won't like it or even accept it. Yet though giving can sound rare and special if you rhapsodize about it, it is of course just a natural and spontaneous human impulse. This central act of giving is curiously neglected in most writing instruction. Otherwise people would have shared their writing just given it to another human being for the sake of mutual pleasure -- as often as they gave it to a teacher for evaluation and advice. For most people, however, the experience of just sharing what they have written is rare. I'm embarrassed that it took me so long not just to understand the importance of sharing, but even to see it -- to realize that there was something else useful you could do with a piece of writing besides getting feedback on it, namely just to give it: for your pleasure in giving and for their pleasure in reading. The reason it took me so long, I suspect, is that I am primarily an English teacher, and the reason I am beginning to notice sharing is that I am beginning to be a writer. Writers are more apt to understand writing as giving: "Here. Take it. Enjoy it. Thank me. (Pay me, if possible.) But I'm not interested right now in evaluation or criticism." English teachers, on the other hand, usually can't think of anything to do with a set of words except to formulate criticism of one sort or another -- high criticism for works of great literature, low criticism for works of student writing. I suspect this is why English teachers so seldom write. Before I could see the importance of just giving writing, I had to satisfy two earlier itches: the itch for more safety in writing; that is, to find more ways to write without giving it to any reader at all; and the itch for more empiricism in writing; that is, to find more ways to learn what really happens in real readers, not just get evaluation and advice from only one authority. With these itches satisfied, I could finally feel that deeper itch just to share. Many pieces of weak writing suffer more from the writer's not having really consented, deep down, to give her meaning than from whatever lack of skill she may have. That same person can write with considerable power and skill when she doesn't hold back at all, when she isn't ambivalent about yielding, handing it over for free. When I think back over much of my writing especially in college and graduate school -- I can understand what was going on much more clearly now in terms of giving. At the time I simply experienced myself struggling to write well -- and mostly not succeeding. Teachers could see that I tried hard -- "tying yourself in knots" was how one teacher put it -- and they could see that I had interesting insights I was trying to communicate, but neither they nor I could figure out why it always came out so unclear. I remember one teacher who said, "Why do you have to complicate it? Why not write it down the way you first thought of it?" But it didn't seem to me that I was complicating things at all. Now, however, I can see -- indeed I can go back and almost feel it -- that my writing really was the product of a kind of complexifying process: a tug of war between my aboveboard eagerness to be a good student and my belowboard reluctance to put out -- to give it to them. This ambivalence made a terrible wringer for my poor words and thoughts to go through before they got on paper. My writing didn't begin to escape from this maze till I finally tried to write a couple of articles for publication. I was no longer reluctant to give to my audience; in fact, I was driven by a considerable desire to make them take it whether they wanted to or not. There are many ways to share. But unless you have an arena designated for it (or can easily publish what you write, for sharing is really a way to publish), sharing takes courage and assertiveness. It means going up to someone and saying, "Can I read you something I've written? I don't want feedback. I just want you to hear it." Sometimes that's not easy, no matter how good the friendship is. Perhaps you forgot to include it in the marriage vows: "To love, honor, and faithfully listen to all writing." Sharing is easiest if you can meet regularly with a group of three or more others for the purpose. It's a kind of celebration. You will find it a great relief, when you get used to it, not to worry about their reactions or think about feedback. Of course, you will get a few stray spontaneous reactions, as at a poetry reading or performance: a chuckle at one passage, hushed silence at another, yawns when your writing is opaque for too long. But the reactions aren't the point. The point is that you are heard. It opens up a door for you and somehow helps you think of more things to write. Sharing also means sending off copies to friends who live far away, but there's a special power that comes from meeting face to face and reading out loud what you have written. You may find the reading out loud frightening, but it is crucial. For there is a deep and essential relationship between writing and the speaking voice. It's complex and mysterious, but one thing is clear: to write with clarity and power requires an essential act of taking full responsibility for your words -- not hedging, holding back, being ambivalent. Reading your words out loud is a vivid outward act that amplifies your sensation of responsibility for your words. That's why oaths and promises' must be spoken out loud to work best. "Repeat after me. . . ." When you only make marks silently on paper and don't make noises with your throat, it is possible to withhold some piece of your self, to keep your fingers crossed behind your back. Reading your words out loud is scary, and many people invariably mumble or read too softly or too fast. We shrink from such blatant showing of our wares. But that is just what helps most. Therefore when you share your writing, you need to give your listeners permission to interrupt and tell you if they cannot comfortably hear and understand your words -- permission to make you give your words. Reading your words out loud is push-ups for the specific muscle used in taking responsibility for your words. Here are some additional benefits of sharing. It's an easy way to learn about writing. When you hear someone read a piece every week or two, someone no better than you, and you see her come up with a passage that is terrific -- but she's using the same old ingredients that she and you have been struggling with week after week -- sometimes you learn more about how to improve your writing than you learn from clear explanations of what is wrong with it or good advice about how to fix it, or inspiring lectures on the seven essentials of good writing. And you don't have to talk about it. You are just listening and learning by ear. Matters of tone and voice are particularly hard to talk about or teach. They are best learned through hearing what you like and imitating it, and hearing what you don't like and getting rid of it. Sometimes the sense of feasibility you get from sharing does more good than anything else. For what's been holding you back most is a deep sense that you couldn't possibly write something that actually affected someone. But then along comes that really good passage written by someone like you. It's not unbelievably good, indeed what's special is its believability: it's mixed in with other passages that are quite ordinary; it even has some obvious weaknesses. But it is so good that it makes you positively hungry to hear more, makes you wish you had written it, and then, finally, makes you realize that you could have written it. I love the bluntness with which I once heard this feeling privately expressed: "If that nerd can write something like that, so can I!" Finally, sharing is perfect practice for giving and getting feed- back. One of the main reasons readers find it difficult to give good feedback is that they worry too much about what feedback to give. They can't really hear or concentrate on the words. But sharing gives readers painless practice in just listening and enjoying what they hear and learning gradually to be confident of their reactions. One of the main reasons writers find it difficult to benefit from feedback is that they are so nervous about giving to readers that they can't really hear or accept the feedback they get. But sharing helps them to learn to give their writing -- scarey enough in itself without the added burden of dealing with feedback. (I suspect that the fear you experience in reading your words out loud hinders your writing even when you are writing alone in a room and not feeling any fear.) But if I talk too solemnly about fear, learning, and taking responsibility for your words, I will overshadow the main thing about sharing: that it is essentially social and enjoyable. It functions as a relief from the solitariness and effort of writing. People get to know each other and their ways of writing. "Oh dear," you may say, "perhaps listeners in a sharing group will like something that's not good writing." If that worries you, you better watch out because it does happen. But I think about my two-year-old son Benjy who says "seep" for sleep and "pill" for spill and other such forms that make him unintelligible to most listeners. We understand him because we hear him constantly and therefore we hear through the externals of his language to the meanings and intentions that lie behind. Surely it is a help and not a hindrance in his learning to communicate better that he has one audience, anyway, where his words work. For improving your writing you need at least some readers to be allies, persons who wholly cooperate in the communicative transaction. When you pass them the potatoes they don't just sit there and look at you holding the bowl with a look that says, "If I had wanted the potatoes I would have asked you for them." They take the bowl and thank you for it. This chapter and the previous one on freewriting are two of this book's shorter chapters. They are short because the procedures they describe are so simple. But I believe you will improve your writing more through freewriting and sharing than through any other activities described in this book. Dialogue In My Head "Do you want your reader to have to struggle to figure out what you are saying?" "Damn right! I had to struggle to figure it out. Why shouldn't he? Besides, if it's too easy for him, he won't appreciate it." |
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