And the there’s “You can’t teach someone to write,” a saying I want to pour gasoline over, drop a lit match atop of, and walk away from like a gangster as the aphorisms bursts into flames while some thug life song with a lot of window-rattling bass plays.

I really hate the adage “You can’t teach someone to write.” I think it’s one of the most untrue statements about making art and being an artist that I have ever heard. And still I continue and continue and continue to hear it.

But empires rise and fall. And the time has come for you to fall, good sir. Now is the hour where I must debunk you, motherf—er. So let’s debunk.

Let’s get this out of the way. You HAVE to teach someone how to write because writers don’t emerge from the head of Zeus fully formed, dressed in armor, ready for battle. You have to learn how to spell words and construct sentences, you have to figure out vocabulary, you have to read book after book after book and figure out what you love and what you hate and what confuses you and what intimidates you and what inspires you. And then you have to finally get to that dizzying precipice where you write that first sentence, that first page, that first completed work, trying with all your heart and soul to be like every writer you have ever loved. And you don’t do all that by yourself. No, don’t be arrogant, you don’t. There’s a combination of family members and English teachers and librarians and authors who have been dead for hundreds of years and loser-nerd friends who also aren’t good at sports or getting leads in school plays) who trade books with you and talk about them with you after you both are finished reading. Those people taught you how to write. You have to be taught how to write just like you have to be taught how to eat solid food and tie your shoelaces. You learn as a child how to be an adult, and you learn as someone who loves art how to be an artist. There’s a progression–of course there is–what is a human life if not a series of lessons you learn (and re-learn, and re-re-learn) to become something you weren’t before? You can be taught. You can become.

But you say, “No, you’re blowing this aphorism up into something it was never meant to be. This aphorism is talking about writing TEACHERS and writing CLASSES and MFA programs and how some people are born brilliant and destined for greatness and some people are born mediocre and are destined for nothing.”

And I still call shenanigans, I call shenanigans even harder on your rebuttal, Imaginary Person Who is Arguing With Me Right Now.

Complete article here.

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