Some People are Just Born Good Writers

About Who Good Writers Are 71

SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST BORN

GOOD WRITERS

Jill Parrott

The author-god, according to mid-20

-century language theo-

rist Roland Barthes, embodies the Romantic notion of the artist

to whom brilliant epiphanies come to be written down. In fact, at

times throughout history, the best authors were believed to have

been chosen and directly inspired by God Himself. Because of

this cultural paradigm, many of us are deeply and psychologically

invested in the idea of individual genius authorship, as discussed

in Dustin Edwards and Enrique Paz’s chapter elsewhere in this

collection. But, Bruce Horner writes in Students, Authorship, and

the Work of Composition that the genius idea separates us from the

real world. By seeing authors as genius artists only, we remove

ourselves from the activity of writing, which is social and contex-

tual, and are distracted by the product itself. When struggling writ-

ers consider writing a piece of art, they become frustrated because

they cannot force their writing to look like what they expect art to

be, and they have no clue where to begin to make themselves the

genius writer they believe teachers, bosses, and readers expect.

Some of this idea—that writing is a talent set in stone—can be

directly correlated to the history of writing instruction itself. At

the end of the 19

century, proponents of a so-called literacy crisis

claimed that students entering American universities needed to

become more familiar with their own language and coincided with

a push to use our education system to build a uniquely American

intellectual identity, which ended up relegating writing instruction

to rst-year courses. Many critics have attached this literacy crisis

to cultural anxiety over the growing pluralism of American soci-

ety as immigration increased with the Industrial Revolution. This

anxiety could also be seen in the approaches taken in these new

72 Bad Ideas

writing-focused classes. In a narrative all writing studies scholars

are familiar with, much of the teaching of writing in late 19

- and

early- to mid-20

-century America focused on the object produced

by writing, not the process of writing a text. This focus on the prod-

uct of writing reinforced the idea of writing as a skill some people

just had. Essays were usually written once and were done, for good

or ill. Students who were privileged to be of the right socioeco-

nomic, national, or ethnic background already wrote to the univer-

sity’s standards because they were part of the group in power who

set the standards. Therefore, their perceived talent perpetuated the

author genius idea because these desirable students were already

seen as good writers while the less desirable students were not.

Now, however, our cultural situation is quite dierent. Because

computer-based composition is quicker than pen to paper and

because the Internet allows us to share what we have written so

quickly, our composition happens quickly, often as a reaction to

what someone else has written or posted. One of the eects of

word processing and subsequently web publishing is that authors

are not just authors; they are also editors and publishers, broad-

ening the individual’s daily interaction with language. In other

words, while the idea of the individual author genius is theoret-

ically problematic, it is also practically problematic because our

everyday authorship practices are socially situated, collaborative,

and interactive. People can and do read and write (and read and

write again) all the time. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook,

Instagram, and others oer daily opportunities for reading, creat-

ing, and responding to texts. Many people are experts at those

activities but then lack the experience and facility to recognize the

rhetorical requirements of other contexts or genres.

Unfortunately, many discussions of authorship tend to ignore

these interesting aspects of language and focus on what writers

should not do: don’t plagiarize, don’t use “I,” don’t use Wikipedia.

The practices needed to become adept at writing are criminalized,

and inexperienced authors are often punished for being inexperienced.

Sometimes when I hear colleagues complain about student writ-

ing, my response is “But isn’t that why we’re here? Is it not our job

to teach them?” But a power dierential between inexperienced

writers and professional authors perpetuates the idea of learners

as helpless children. We paint narratives of new writers negatively,

researchers refer to them by rst name only in publications rather

than last names as we would real authors (in other words, “Julie

writes” as compared to “Faulkner writes”), we construct writers

About Who Good Writers Are 73

as passive rather than active, and we negatively compare them to

professional writers. In doing this, as Amy Robillard asks, “How

can students not come up lacking?” particularly in their own minds.

As a reaction to these cultural forces at play, process-focused

teaching uses the steps taken as the writer creates the text—more

clearly connecting the act of writing with the product in the minds

of those participating. Since that shift in the 1960s, writing theo-

rists have been truly frightened to refer to our teaching as skills-

based for fear that it might undercut all the work done to challenge

those previously held assumptions of product-focused writing. But

skill is not a word we should fear if we dene skill not as natural

talent but as a set of habits of mind and practices that can be taught

and learned.

Indeed, the key to improving novice writers’ experiences

is improving how they think about their work, a process called

metacognition. Opening up cognitive space that allows for meta-

cognition and reection is essential to experiential and practical

improvement. One particularly powerful concept in the current

metacognitive conversation is persistence: Persistence emphasizes

that experience is more powerful than unchangeable ability, and

challenges help move writers forward rather than delaying their

progress. Good writers build these habits of mind. A success-

ful writer—whether someone working alone or with a commu-

nity group, or as a university student, professional writer, or any

other way—is not one who necessarily writes more but one who

persists and reects on the work done as a means of improvement.

Instructors work not to reward the talented genius and punish the

unlucky, but to provide opportunities for writing, feedback, reec-

tion, remixing, and revision of that work as socially located activi-

ties with rhetorical awareness. When a previously bad writer sees

improvement, sees the value of persistence, and feels the satisfac-

tion of the metacognitive recognition that they have gotten better,

they will know that good writers are not born but come to fruition

in the social act of writing itself.

To alleviate this disconnect between what culture believes

writing is and what the activity of writing involves, many writing

studies professionals agree that we should emphasize the contex-

tual aspects that shape writing. We should emphasize writing as

a socially located activity and reject it as idealized art object. One

potential way to do this is to take writing out of the sole context

of the classroom. Traditional essays that are only seen by a teacher

(or perhaps a teacher and a peer reviewer) do not build writers’

74 Bad Ideas

concepts of themselves as authors because they can see those

assignments as acontextual hoops to jump through. Writing expe-

riences that broaden the writer’s audience or provide real contexts

such as blogs or service learning placements in the community can

help new writers’ see themselves as real authors with real audi-

ences and see the act of writing as a socially located activity.

I will not deny, however, that certainly some authors are natu-

rally more comfortable, more experienced, or more condent than

others or may have more practiced facility with certain writing

situations. Natural talent exists. Sometimes I compare writing to

sports: I am not a naturally talented athlete, but I have trained for

and run in dozens of races, from 5Ks to half-marathons. I am a

runner. A person may not be naturally strong, but how could they

gain strength? Lift weights. Need more exibility and balance?

Practice yoga. Likewise, it is with writing. We are all authors, and

all authors can become better authors.

Indeed, research in writing studies shows that improved writ-

ing can be taught to writers at all levels, but we must rst debunk

the deeply held idea in the collective psyche that only some lucky

people are good writers. If a person thinks their writing ability is

stuck in place, improvement is incredibly dicult, further solidify-

ing as a self-fullling prophecy the belief that they are a hopeless

cause. This idea that some people are good writers while others are

not can be truly crippling to a writer. Good writing instruction—

either in a classroom setting, a tutor session, or informally with

oneself—can only occur if the person believes they can become a

good writer with practice and focused feedback, which can only

happen if they have debunked the myth of the genius author. All

writers can improve their own writing by discovering which strat-

egies work for them and where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

We are not bound by an inborn, set level of writing talent. Good

writers are not born. They are learned.