“You write too much about writing. Your readers aren’t writers, most of them.”
Fair point, pal. But what can I do about it? Writing’s what I do so it’s what I think about. You don’t learn how to write, you’re always learning. Luck is beginner’s luck. Folks lucky enough to have written memorably may opine in hindsight why they made what they made. The likelier truth is they’ve no idea. They didn’t plan, they whooshed as down a rapids, hanging on, and hey, it turned out OK. “I’ve been quoted,” said Frost to an interviewer: ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.’” The best writing is semiconscious, like lovemaking; it crackles like a fire. Who instructs a fire?
If I’m not learning to write, I should hang it up. Rote – rut – rot. No two occasions alike. Different facts, different folks, different vibe. “Every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
Thank you, Possum Eliot, couldn’t have said it better, though maybe I should have tried. Quoting’s almost cheating, borrowing eloquence, pretending erudition one does not possess, like a little girl balancing in her mother’s high heels, only sometimes a forbear’s said it so well, why even try? Again and again Shakespeare says things so well they don’t need saying again. But there’s always plenty fresh to be said. Shakespeare wasn’t sitting in Poughquag, NY, age 72, sky darkening, thunder grumbling, a summer thunderstorm – yesterday was “unseasonably” hot – puppy Henry turning on his cushions unperturbed: all this is new.
AI, we’re told, will replace all perfunctory writing with better, quicker, cheaper. Jobs will be lost to machines – as in every industry since the Industrial Revolution took off. The harvester eliminated pickers; the phone obsoleted letters; food choppers shrank kitchen staffs; search engines killed the research business, etc. Humanity works hard to put itself out of work, so we can enjoy more “leisure time,” until that too grows burdensome. Give me days on, not days off!
What AI will never do is the next thing which nobody’s imagined yet. Good writing will persist as long as readers want to read it and writers extrude words that don’t mimic AI’s. We must teach writing and teach it better, so readers can dope out what we’re saying, then teach forgetting all we’ve been taught so we can make new. Perfunctory writing – in journalism, law, academic journals, etc. – stales its producers, so they can only write as they’ve been shown, which is why God made No-Doz. It took me a lifetime to recover from good manners – in language and behavior. Lucky to have lived this long.
Rarely do I know what I’ll say when I start saying and when I do I’m mistaken. Topic and moment deal you cards, no two hands alike, how will you play? I confine my reading to writers who write in the same spirit. Whatever their style – elegant or gruff – they’re daredevils. You think Jane Austen writes polite prose? Read again. She’s a trickster, subversive, sly, winking, entre nous, alive. Feel the acerbity her exact diction masks!
The rules for good writing and good living are the same: Be glad, alert, make every day new, improvise – and bless your chance.