Being a professional writer is considered pretty fantastic. Wanting to become a writer, though, is not. My grandfather once taught a workshop for aspiring writers. In an article published after he died, one of his former students remembered fondly that he started the workshop by saying "if at least one of you stops wanting to become a writer by the end of the course, I will consider it a success."
Now, say you are taking a woodworking class and on the first day, the instructor goes "I'll consider myself to have succeeded if when this ends, y'all stop wanting to make shit out of wood." What would you think of that? I don't even know, because that will not ever happen. If you are a craftsman, wouldn't you want others to share your love of the craft, even if they can't share your craftsmanship? For woodwork, I think the answer is clearly yes, but for writing, it's not so obvious. Even if you don't buy my grandfather's opening statement, still it's true that aspiring writers are held in contempt. Why is this?
Is it that successful writers are snobs, who think they are so much better than their writing peers? Is it that successful writers are jealous of their own success, and resent the possibility of others doing well? Is it that non-writers think (like one of the sisters in Happiness) that they could easily become writers if they'd wanted to, or that writing is dilettantish and just what you do when you're a lazy good-for-nothing? I do not doubt that all these explanations play a part. But I think an important part of the explanation is this: there are no scribes anymore.
The world doesn't need scribes - and hasn't needed them for a long time. Being a scribe isn't even a reasonable hobby. But what would you think of a composer who had never played any music? Isn't trying to be a writer without first apprenticing as a scribe the same thing?
No comments:
Post a Comment