Why we write and why we don’t: Lesson 11 of Write it! How to get started

What I reveal here is intimate (the recording) and the lesson includes a fair-use pdf with a writing exercise based on my recording, and we dig deeper in this lesson.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

You’ve come this far, time to dig deeper, time to go paid:

Here’s an oversimplification of the writer’s process, one that I use in all my courses. I argue that artistic work has two major components:

The analytical—what the writer needs to understand, the conscious work.

And the intuitive —the unconscious work.

This lesson and the writing exercise will focus on analytical work: a close reading of a terrific short story.

In this post and ones that follow, I’ll explore writers who started late. That doesn’t mean you have to start when older, but seeing what writers who had to wait and why will help us all see how you can start—even if you have job you need to go every day!

Let’s begin with Tillie Olsen. Olsen didn’t publish her much-admired and ever-so-brief collection Tell Me a Riddle¹ until she was fifty.

You’re reading this because you want to know something about the writing process, even if it’s to understand how fiction works and be a better reader and not write. You’ll end up a better reader, enjoy more whatever you read—or watch (movies, TV)—by understanding what makes them tick, the very thing the writer or director wants to hide from you.

Many of you are here because you suspect you might like to write or you’ve been writing and stopped, or you, perhaps, like me when I finally got the nerve to take a class, were sure you’d fail.

I still wrote. It was showing the work that terrified me long before I was willing to call myself a writer. I used to refer to that word as the “w” word.

But long before that, I was a teacher and still am. The one thing I know from my teaching is that fear of failing impedes learning. You may have had a terrifying professor who inspired you, but I suspect that ultimately his or her success was built on his ability to teach you how to teach yourself. When we learn that way—and it’s the best way to ensure long-term memory—we make mistakes. Those mistakes have to be okay or you’ll quit and try something safer.

Table of Contents for all 19 lessons