I am a pushover when it comes to writers writing about writing. I will read almost anything any writer writes about the craft and their experience of it. It might come in book form like Stephen King’s On Writing (unputdownable) or Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird (laugh out loud). It might just be a quick question and answer item about reading or three pieces of advice. Recently, I found Swallowed by a Whale edited by Huw Lewis-Jones and published by the British Library (2020). It includes sections called ‘Golden Rules’, numbered statements of advice, and other more reflective sections of drawing and writing by contemporary writers and illustrators.
Writers’ advice for aspiring writers is both remarkably consistent and gloriously idiosyncratic. Despite contemporary desperation for certainty and an insistence on rules, published writers continue go about their task in ways that suit them. They frequently remark that there are no rules. Every writer works in their own particular way. What works for one person may not work for another. There is no single ‘right way’ and yet there are some things which seem always to apply. One thing that most writers agree on is that a writer should read. Here is Edward Carey’s Golden Rule Number 2:
2. Read. Read, read, read, read, read, read, read. Don’t ever stop reading other people’s work. Read. READ! Keep your mind open for inspiration everywhere, but most of all read and read and read. I love the story about Marquez reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis and suddenly feeling liberated by it. He hadn’t realised writing could be like that. Kafka’s imagination gave him permission to leap further, to push his writing. Which brings me to …
3. Dare yourself!
I’d like to think that as writing teachers we dare children to write in many different ways. It is why it is so important to read aloud. We want children to hear many voices. We want to be showing them lots of possibilities. When we read aloud, when we introduce a poem or a piece of prose to the writing workshop, we are saying, listen, here’s a way of writing. When we choose texts to share with other writers we may be introducing a distinctive voice, an unexpected structure, a way of approaching an idea that we simply hadn’t thought of. As we write in response we are given permission to try something out. It’s not the same old, same old. We might stumble, but that’s OK. We are adding to our repertoire of the possible. As we take heed of other writers, we are being given permission to dare.