To ask the question, "can writing be taught," inevitably turns our heads in the direction of an even foggier one, a question requiring a plunge into an ocean we only want to dip our toes into. The question being, what is writing?

It brings me back to the first day of class when the question of "what is art?" was posed. A collection of words, that when ordered in such a way sends a load of bricks straight down my throat to rest, odious in the pit of my stomach. It is a question I fruitlessly spent the last year of my life trying to answer, knowing very well my efforts to define it objectively were entirely superfluous. The question of "what is art? is I believe, answerable, a problem is posed however when we begin to understand that the answer is not one, but many, and whatever answer we can arrive at will never be it. There is no it. And for a linear thinker like myself, this postmodern crap kills me. Much like the question of writing it is imperative we ask this question however and attempt to answer it as well, but it is duly important that we hold no one to our answers but ourselves. And our answers must always be ready to change and to move as we grow.

To write, it seems that we must know what writing is, and to teach writing this supposition seems to hold even stronger. But to define objectively pushes so many great writers out of the picture, and deems them the exceptions, implying that yes, perhaps they made it work, but you probably can’t so don’t try. I for one would like to keep my options open. I like to read writers with different styles, one’s with different definitions of writing, and I believe this can be done, even while holding true to your own convictions, but it is natural to slip into critiques involving only our own, limited definitions.

On the other hand I believe critique is important. As with art, it is important to hold writing to a certain standard so to see that it does not become lazy and invalid. And I would like to believe that there is some metaphysical truth to writing and to art, that there is in fact good writing and bad writing. There is a reason that Damien Hurst is in art museum and I am not, and that Jonathon Franzen has won the national book award while I am published only in the Point Weekly. I do believe that there is a difference between Duchamps up-side-down urinal at the Tate Modern in London, and me putting my cell phone on a pedestal in a gallery and calling it art. Yet I can’t exactly communicate what it is that makes one art and not the other. It is something organic that evades the limits of definitions.

A tricky paradox is presented when we ask such questions as "what is writing?" For not to define writing is immobilizing. It is like telling someone to bake a cake when they don’t even know what baking is. Some answers must be formed. On the other hand, definitions can be so limiting to the young writer. Creativity and individuality, the very virtues which I believe distinguish the great writers can so easily be squeezed out of definitions.

And so my answers are offered gingerly, they are vague formulations culminating only in more questions. But perhaps the task is not to teach students how to write, for this would require a concrete definition of the term, but rather give them the skills, the tools, and the knowledge to formulate their own, what perhaps we might call philosophies, rather than definitions of writing. This permits the student with the creativity to allow their individual voice to unfold in their writing, while still giving them some sense of structure through grammatical rules and effective methods, allowing them to hone their creativity. I believe that teaching an individual to write goes far beyond grammar, structure, even effectiveness, it dips into the vastness of a metaphysics. It pressures the student to consider their own convictions in order to render their writing meaningful and significant.

Here I call on Yagoda in his essay, "Style: a Pleasure for the Reader, or the Writer?" to sum it all up,
"And there you have a paradigm of style for the rest of us. It emerges when writers are comfortable and proficient with their tools. Style is expressed unconsciously, but shaped consciously, in revision. It is a whispering, not a shouting voice; whether readers discern it depends on their familiarity with the writer and their own skill as readers. The writer himself or herslef is aware of it; identifying, developing, and shaping it is one of the main pleasures of the craft."

So yes, I do believe that writing can be taught, but only in its individual parts, the ethereal linkage between the logistics of grammar and technique must somehow be inspired by the musings of the soul, and this is impossible to teach but essential to encourage.