"I cancelled class on Monday because I needed a day to myself after all that," the Engl 201B professor shares. He's staring straight into the computer screen that sits on top of his disorderly desk.
He cancelled class yesterday as well, explaining that he needed to go to a doctor's appointment that he's been waiting for--five months, to be exact.
Perhaps I give the impression that the English instructor only wishes to disembowel me as a writer, only hands out criticism and big, blatant "X" marks on paragraphs that he finds to be inconsequential and a distraction from the work's purpose. My ex-therapist, a wonderful, caring woman, once told me about the "sandwich effect," giving bad news in between two pieces of good news. The English instructor holds to that as well. Some of his remarks have been deeply flattering.
Yesterday, I read yet another article about how to become an expert in an arena. The main point of the essay was in its last line: "find a teacher." It pressed that people who are self-taught don't recognize their errors as quickly as an outside guru can--that greatness needed guidance.
These news articles all bring up an interesting point: to what extent can writing be taught? Surely, we can insist on grammar and spelling rules, and a few general suggestions like not using the "be" verbs often, instead find "stronger" verbs. If writing doesn't require talent but only extreme dedication and practice, aren't we all capable of being Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath (minus the suicide, of course) or Virginia Woolf (again, minus the suicide)?
Some have even argued that Woolf's greatness was a product of her bipolar disorder, the very illness that took her life. They say it was the spring of her creativity. Most people who have ever been manic or hypomanic have experienced "flight of ideas" as part of the racing thoughts. Maybe that was the well in which Woolf dipped.
Or are some people just born with an aptitude of putting words together that make music, even in prose form?
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