I recently read an essay in The Paris Review by Sheila Heti. I found it to be a lovely little paradox of a piece, for it urges caution around writing advice, but in so doing, provides its own advice. According to Heti, the act of teaching writing is beset by an inescapable absurdity.
I think what confuses me so much about those who have prescriptions for how to write is that they assume all humans experience the world the same way. For instance, that we all think “conflict” is the most interesting and gripping part of life, and so we should all make conflict the heart of our fiction. Or that when we think of other people, we all think of what they look like. Or that we all believe things happen due to identifiable causes. Shouldn’t a writer be trained to pay attention to what they notice about life, what they think life is, and come up with ways of highlighting those things?
Heti’s point reminded me of William Kennedy’s response to a question on whether his mounting number of accolades — like the 1983 MacArthur Fellowship and the 1984 Pullitzer Prize for Ironweed — would change his writing:
People ask will I change the way I write, and I don’t believe I will. The work is based on what I see in the world, what’s around me and what I take home from that. It’s a superficial response if you change your writing because of a temporary change in your personal condition.
Both Heti and Kennedy emphasize attending to to how you encounter yourself, life, world, etc. Learn from others, sure. Take cues from those more experienced. Follow advice if you want, knowing you can stop following it whenever you want. Above all, however, both stress an unwavering attention to what intrigues you, what perplexes you, what unsettles you. A writer’s discipline, I think they’re saying, ultimately lies in their ability to remain fiercely loyal to whatever stirs within them that strange desire to write.
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