HOW TO WRITE: JUST DO IT

I have been teaching people how to write for quite a while now. There are as many theories about how to teach writing as there are teachers. You can read thousands of books that outline techniques and exercises that will help people become more proficient and skilled at writing.
My theory is simple, and my technique follows closely: just write. Write in a variety of styles, for a variety of purposes, to a variety of audiences. In fact, what you write is not so important as that you write.

This is not a philosophy that my students accept without protest. Many of them do not want to write anything until they are sure it will be perfect. They want to instead spend time with stand-alone grammar worksheets with one right answer, hoping that if they can master enough worksheets, they will get good grades on them (they hope) and, somehow, magically learn how to write well.
But I believe that grammar worksheets, while morale-building if you can get the hang of them and get all the answers right, have very little, if anything, to do with becoming a competent writer.

I insist that a writer learns the craft of writing only one way: by writing. Writing is difficult in the same way ballroom dancing is difficult. The successful ballroom dancer has some information in his or her head, such as the sequence of steps, the proper way to hold your arms, how to coordinate movement with the rhythm of the music, and so forth. Yet the first spin around the floor as a dancer is rarely perfect or even acceptable.


Vernon and Irene Castle

Why? Because the dancer has to factor in the size and shape of the dance floor, the skill and shape of his or her partner, the talent of the orchestra, the temperature of the room, his or her own state of health, etc. in order to dance well. Having head knowledge is one thing; using it correctly is something altogether different.
Writing is the same. All the correctly-done grammar sheets in the world will not prepare you for the actual performance of writing. You need the head knowledge, yes, but you also need to apply that knowledge to the situation in which you find yourself. You may not know much about the topic, for example, or you may have a slight headache, or the room may be too stuffy, or your pen may run out of ink. These are the hard facts of writing: you must continually adjust to the demands of the moment.

Only when you write often can you begin to attain enough confidence and develop your own "bag of tricks" so that you become a skilled writer. It's the act of writing, and then critiquing your writing (or having it critiqued by your instructor, or anyone else who's willing to put that much energy into your work) that makes you a writer.
It's inevitable that, at a certain point in teaching a writing class, the students come to the realization that writing is hard work, and that it's not going away. They cannot hope to avoid writing (the way you might avoid exercising) if they are taking a writing class. They must and will write. And they will get poor grades, if they have come into the class ill-prepared.


I know the feeling of dreading something, and I know my students often do not want to write. Yet what else can I do? They must force themselves to write in order to learn. Very few people wake up one morning with an amazing level of skill in writing as a gift from the writing fairies overnight. No, people learn to write like they learn anything else--by getting some basic information and then practicing till they attain an acceptable level of skill. If I were teaching an exercise class, for example (a terrible thought!), the poorly-performing students could simply drop out and say, "Exercise is not for me." But my students are freshmen in college, and writing will be their lives for the next few years. They cannot "go around" the need to write competently.
The only way to improve as a writer is to write. Period. No grammar worksheet can magically transform a poorly-skilled writer into someone who can write with coherence, unity, and clarity. It's a trial-and-error thing, writing. The great ballroom dancers know that greatness comes at a cost. Only those who are willing to pay the price will succeed. So write as if your life depended on it, and you will succeed beyond your own imagining. Just do it.