Language is incredibly complex. Words have meaning but they also have connotations, histories, cultural reflections as well as class, ethnicity, politics and other subtle markers built into them.

Language, just like music, has sound, rhyme, rhythm, cadence, dissonance and pacing. Words make pictures, movies and images within the reader's head. So a writer must choose one word over another and then place them on the page, one after another, forming these words into sentences, linking the sentences to one another, forming the sentences into paragraphs, linking them together, forming the paragraphs into scenes, building a story, word by word. And then he or she goes back and breathes the missing words onto the page and breathes the extraneous words off the page.

All of this can be taught and must be practiced. People come naturally to a sense of story. Research tells that people are inherently imaginative, although no one seems to know why. Small children, as soon as they begin string a few words together, begin telling stories. But writing stories down doesn't come naturally; it's an art that can be learned. And being taught writing by someone who understands how it works can save an emerging writer a huge amount of time.

And, the one thing no creative writing teacher ever tells a student is what to write, any more than a music teacher tells his or her students what music to love. Only how to make the story more readable, more coherent, more true to itself.

What I ask

When I teach creative writing, I am conscious that I am working on many levels. I am aware that people are nervous if not absolutely terrified when they first walk into a writing classroom. I am aware that they might come into the classroom with an idea for a story but this idea will probably change. I am aware that in the course of the class, some people might laugh, some might cry, some might get angry, some might feel hurt. We are, after all, working with the very stuff and material of people's lives and selves. So part of what I do is pay attention to how people are listening to each other, what they are saying to each other. I ask them to treat each other with great kindness and great honesty, also a useful skill in other areas of life.

And I am aware that I am asking them to turn their lives and stories into a product of some kind, a product that can be critiqued, shaped, rewritten, revised and eventually, I hope, sold into a market so that other people can read it. I know that they have to go through a process of not only learning the craft of how to do this, but the emotional and intellectual toughness and balance as well to learn to sell it.

I am also asking them to think very hard, analytically and deeply about other people's writing, both their fellow students and any books or magazines or articles or comic books or whatever else they are reading. I ask them to find and read books and articles that are like what they want to write. I want them to place themselves within the huge and august and overwhelming tradition of literature. I want them to read and read, and also learn to read like writers and then forget everything they have read, including their fellow students' work and just write. I want them to write original fresh innovative work and still build on the tradition of the writers who have come before them.

I want them to save a lot of time and solitude for their own writing and still find ways and methods to include themselves within the writing community -- to create or join a writer's group, take more classes, go to readings, join writing organizations. And then go home and write their own material.

Because these are writers, these people in my classroom. Some will become colleagues, many will become friends. We will encounter each other at conferences or in publications or as names in reviews. I am there as their colleague, coach, guide, mentor, but never as someone in charge.

And ultimately, and oddly, it isn't them that matters most to me; it is their work. I am finally, and always on the side of their writing. I want it to be the very best it can be. I want to find whatever is blocking it from coming into view as wonderful writing and help the student to find that as well. I am on the side of literature, of books, of writing. That's my job. That's what I do.

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