dive into mark

Excerpts of mail I’ve received on Most valuable asset. I wrote:

This bothers me enormously. First, the mind-boggling lack of self-knowledge required to write every day and not realize that you write badly. But more important, the fact that there is obviously a secret third ingredient required for becoming a good writer. You need to read every day… and write every day… and X. But I don’t know what X is, and obviously my teachers didn’t know either. They had it, but they didn’t know it. Daily writing is not our most valuable asset. So what is it?

Jeremy replies:

X is the desire to improve. It’s the ability to recognize your failings and strive to do better.

Adam replies:

It is a combination of humility and curiosity. Humility, so that you don’t believe you’ve already got that whole writing thing down pat, and in fact believe that your writing could always bear improvement. And curiosity, so that you are actually interested in finding out what might constitute better writing.

Sol replies:

I think the answer is, fundamentally, an ability to see what is good in the things we read, and an ability to look for and develop that in what we write. Reflection. Feedback. Reading lots every day isn’t going to do any good if you don’t reflect on what you’re reading, and why and how it’s good.

Ben replies:

The third ingredient is care. You have to read every day, write every day, and care. It’s not necessarily caring about writing, either; it could just be caring about the topic, or caring about the author. There just needs to be some reason either to examine the text for meaning beyond its face value.

Lou replies:

Unselfconsciousness, I think, is the hardest, last piece. Sometimes you can keep it levitated, a dancing, unchosen lottery ball. Otherwise it’s a cat that won’t git, a smudger.

Matthew replies:

I think self-publishing and blogging are manifestations of potential and effort. By potential I mean one’s natural ability as a writer. There are those who were born to write well and those who were not. Potential is nothing, however, without effort. Effort focused on seeking out well-written materials, and on practicing to reproduce the magic that inspires us.

Matt P. replies:

You just need talent. I don’t know that it’s reducible beyond that. The way genius is inherently inexplicable — there’s no accounting for where true creative inspiration comes from. What is original is, by definition, not derivative from what came before. So every piece of good writing, like every piece of good art, is a minor miracle.

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