Read Like a Writer, Not a Literature Professor
Musings by Lisa Torcasso Downing
A year ago, my department head assigned me to teach a sophomore literature class in addition to my regular freshman composition courses. While I didn’t like the idea of building another curriculum, I did look forward to teaching literature. I earnestly began reading the anthology I was provided, but when I tried to devise teaching strategies–historical, cultural, textual, rhetorical–my knees weakened because I realized that I am no longer capable of looking at literature through the eyes of a literature professor. I can’t pick up a book and search for the author’s intent, or worry about archetype and symbol, or celebrate the use of metaphor for metaphor’s sake. The gears in my brain have completely shifted off that track.
I figured if I proceeded teaching the lit course the way my inclinations drove me, I’d be ruined. I could almost hear the future complaints of my colleagues, leveled at those who would become my former students:
“I don’t care if your last English professor did explain exactly why some literature bores you and why some doesn’t. You still have to read Don Quixote–and like it!”
As it turned out, the gods saved me: The class didn’t attract enough students and was canceled. But the experience drove home to me the fact that creative writers are very different animals from literature professors.
I teach the Toulmin model of argument to my freshmen composition students, and many of them struggle to understand how his analysis of argument will help them write better college essays. I tell them that it may not help them write better–but that it should help them rewrite better essays because knowing the model will improve their ability to critique their own work. (How they groan!) I then speak the words some have waited all their academic years to hear:
The problem with academic-types is that they approach things backwards. They begin with a finished product–a piece of completed and published writing–and then figure out what in that text makes it successful. In other words, they read the text so that they know what it accomplishes–its feeling, flavor, motive, objective–and then they return to the text to hunt up all he rhetorical devices that are in line with that end result. Once this is done, they turn to the student–some of whom are novice writers–and hand over what amounts to a grocery list of things that make a book successful.
But we all know that a well-stocked pantry does not a delicious meal make. Any of us who have had the writing workshop experience know that that grocery list of literary devices does not, in and of itself, guarantee a successful or compelling piece of literature. Some symbols don’t work; some metaphors detract; some descriptive writing is tedious . . .
And this is where we find many early-stage writers, sitting around those workshop tables, wondering what magic is required to tranform all the proper ingredients into the “right” ingredients. In a recent post on the AML list, one such talented artist stated plainly that she doesn’t know how to write a novel. She asked for advice. More than one respondent suggested, among other things, that she read, read, read. Read everything. Read everyday.
I agree, but with a caveat: Read like a writer.
Unlike literary scholars who begin with a finished product, writers begin with a blank comptuer screen. They must figure out how to use words to build a story that effectively manipulates their audience. Because what a writer does is so vastly different from what a lit professor/critic does, it makes little sense to read the way they taught us: First, forward for familiarity with the text; and then backwards (or by moving back through the text) for interpretive meaning . . . which, of course, is derived through traditional literary analysis.
In other words, reading like a literature professor will not do much to improve a writer’s skill. A writer must read like a writer. The first step in that process is to forget about traditional literary analysis. I don’t care if you are writing lit fiction or not. Literary analysis is post-game commentary offered by literature aficianados who have nothing to do with the actual game play, or with the building of story.
Did you hear the one about the NFL quarterback who called an audible in the Super Bowl because he knew the talking heads in the press box would approve of the play? Or the one about the NBA coach who listened to reel after reel of post-game commentary about his team’s performance–and then developed his next game plan based on what he heard so that the commentators would praise him on television?
If your child dreams of playing short stop in the big leagues, would you recommend he learn baseball from the announcer?
These notions are ludicrous. They’re backwards. Likewise, it is silly for writers to expect to learn to play their game at the top level by aiming for positive analysis from the literati, or by striving to shove into their writing all the things the literati notice in “good” fiction. If creative writers want to achieve the cohesiveness that pleases their literature professors, they should stop thinking like those professors, stop approaching literature in the same manner and with the same mindset. Professors–critics–work backwards. Again, they begin with a finished product and from it, they develop insight.
The creative writer, on the other hand, works forward–from insight to finished product. So the writer must read as he or she writes: Read forward.
My space is limited, and I’ve only scratched the surface. I haven’t time right now to explore further the notion of reading like a writer, or what it means to read forward. However, I’ll return to this topic next month and flesh out my thinking about what these things mean. But in the interim, chew on this assertion:
Reading like a writer means that you approach literature with naivete.
Discuss.
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April 23rd, 2009 at 7:08 am
Interesting, Lisa. Have you read _Reading Like a Writer_ by Francine Prose? Really interesting book.
Here’s the way I approach reading like a writer with my students: I have to try to deprogram them from the “reader response” type of literary criticism they’ve learned in lit classes. (Very few students–even English majors–regularly apply other types of literary criticism to a text.) They’re used to talking about what they personally liked or didn’t like about a story or a character, how a particular plot point made them feel, what it reminded them of in their own lives, etc.
What I try to do is to help them to look at the choices the writer has made and ask themselves “why.” Why did the writer choose to begin the story here? Why did the writer choose this particular point of view? This particular word? Stuff like that.
I suppose this method of teaching is still “teaching backward”–but it’s teaching backward while using a writer’s eyes instead of a literary theorist’s eyes.
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:51 am
Love this post, Lisa.
The principal at my wife’s school came from 13 years of teaching high school English. When he found out my wife an I were writers, he started talking about this novel he wanted to write but could never get off the ground. So I started giving him little tutorials on writing and story structure.
As we progressed, he admitted that he had zero knowledge of these concepts. His English degree and all the years he taught gave him no tools to actually write. What he could do was read and interpret.
I got the same reaction during the year I taught high school. I started with the very basics of storytelling, and never once heard a student say, “Hey, we covered this in 4th grade,” or something.
Schools raise consumers, not creators.
April 23rd, 2009 at 8:30 am
Angela’s experience w. students who come into her classroom having been taught that what matters is what they liked or didn’t like is very different from my experience with students and from my teenagers experience in public school. Perhaps that’s a regional variance. But for my kids–and this was my experience–it never mattered what the reader felt, but what the writer intended. So perhaps I’m beginning at a different point than Angela.
I’m not so interested in reader response theory, though some of it has merit IMO. I know as a writer, I’m entirely focused on the response of the reader, an idea that reader response doesn’t seem to acknowledge. But I’ll engage that thought in more depth later.
And no, I haven’t read the book. I’ll pick it up and see if she’s right.
Stephen, you put it well when you say schools raise consumers, not creators. Whats worse, so many creative writing classes are not taught by creators, much less by successful creators.
I did get to the point where I wanted to teach the lit course because I realized my approach would likely seem fresh to the students. Its good to hear your students responded well. But I also knew it wouldn’t prepare them for the next teacher down the road who wouldn’t likely get where I (or they) were coming from. Still, since it was sophomore lit, I would have probably been their last english teacher…
But you know, when I interviewed at a job fair for a public school position, I said I would use this novel approach. The teacher I spoke to who was screening applicants did not react favorably, it seemed to me, to the idea. I didn’t get a second interview. But maybe she was just jealous of my blue eyes and gorgeous figure.
April 23rd, 2009 at 8:32 am
Hm, I guess I didn’t log on as me, so for the record, the above post (and this one) is written by that Downing woman who submitted the post. But if you were too dim to figure that out, you probably aren’t reading this blog in the first place.
April 24th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
One of the things I realized while doing grad work (library science) is story time is the great weeder. If you writing doesn’t sound good out loud it needs help. Especially today with the popularity in audio books.
PS it isn’t just English that’s lacking in HS…*sigh* don’t get me started about the status quo of science or math education approaches.
April 29th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Robin,
I’m totally with you about testing work in the cleansing fire of reading it aloud to kids. I read a book each day to a group of 3rd and 4th grade boys for a few months and quickly found out which authors had the chops. Dan Gutman emerged gloriously as did Eion Colfer. Jon Scieszka did well too. The best read-aloud I came across, though, was The Giggler Treatment. It practically read itself.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Lisa:
Thank you! As an older student trying to achieve a meaningful degree, one that trains my writing skills, I have been railing for several years about this. The professors at the local university want to dictate their syllabi, complimented by their “subjective-objective” interpretation of an authors work. No clue as to how to derive insight, philosophical or historical references are given, and students sit quietly and cynically, because they know … NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR THEIR VOICE OR CARES OF THEIR PASSION REGARDING THE WRITING! Success is really about learning a template to produce derriere kissing regurgitations, which kill insight and creative inspiration of the works! It is about working hard to process the essays and papers, the latter often giving more latitude for the student’s view via their thesis. My ambition is to write and become infused by a given canon of classic authors, and genres, as a basic reference as a baseline of skills and knowledge. But by fear of producing grades, and requirements that are about training to be a literary critic, it is a losing battle! I mean where the hell is the passion, the “classroom dialogue” the allowed mistakes, shared epiphanies, students sitting in circles as a “conservatory of creativity”? And, what about the training in independent thinking, verbal expressions and cooperative debate to train critical thinking? No original writing is allowed, because we are desperately trying to “paint within the lines”. If I speak of literature I have read out of class, I assure you the experience boosted my esteem, stirred intrigue, allowed an open and FREE mind to gather the epiphanies of the author thru osmosis, and I can substantiate the validity of my knowledge of the work in later conversations with the “educated”. I hardly remember the works I am “forced” to “process” in a literature class. Kurt Vonnegat (sp) addresses this on a Charlie Rose interview… “why don’t many great writers come out of literature departments?”… the answer is they are robotic technicians with no inner hunger for the love of literature, and if that is in them it is severely squelched by the system of study. If you have any suggestions a s to how to navigate through an English degree and remain inspired, become a better writer, and authentically educated, my plea is for your expansion on “reading like a writer”, and he employment of this in the study of literature in pursuing an English degree. If not, perhaps I’ll go to film school, read “freely” on my own, and tell my own stories, rather than wear the attitude of the literate simply because I’m enrolled in what appears to be higher intellectual study, but produces only a critic. Thank you and I would be grateful for your further insights. ~ Douglas