Teaching Writing and Learning

By Paul D. Pfeiffer

(Minneapolis-Saint Paul) I’ve collaborated with a wide range of people with varied skills, experience, and interest in writing. I’ve coached teenagers on college applications, and I’ve taught composition and poetry to university students. I’ve been hired for editorial advice on a doctoral thesis. I’ve guided an entrepreneur with no writing experience through the initial drafts of his family history. I’ve helped professionals craft blog posts and white papers in industries from agriculture, health care, and construction. Collaborating on writing projects reveals a lot about a person.

Acknowledging writing skills and deficits

It only takes a few lines for me to assess a person’s writing skills, and maybe it’s more gut instinct than assessment. In those first words, I can feel an author’s authentic desire to express something, even if they don’t have all the skills needed to accomplish their goals. At the other end of the spectrum, I experience the author’s haste; a focus on the clock; the desire to be done with this task. At both extremes, I sense their fear that the words will reveal their discomfort in committing their ideas to writing.

The first kind of writer benefits from the belief that they have something important to say. Lack of formal writing training isn’t a huge barrier to new and inquisitive writers. They make enormous leaps in ability right away. They are fast learners because they connect the effort to gain skills, to their capacity to express themselves. For some people, that’s an attractive bargain. Like all writers, these people just need an outside perspective on their work in order to polish it, which makes my job easy.

Hurried writers are hampered by their focus on getting the task off their list. Their first lines are crammed with big words, elevated language, and complicated sentence structure. They drop in jargon for credibility. Whether the project is a tough college essay or a tax article assigned by the boss, the writer’s main concern is project completion rather than communication. They are word processing, not writing.

These writers say they like their essays after the first draft and see no need to change them. They maintain they don’t have time to revise. These people have difficulty accepting feedback because it extends the project timeline and prolongs their discomfort. If they view writing as a task similar to filling out a Form 990, the extra effort and extra time cost them extra money. And in the world of billable hours, the slow process of writing well can be a pricey proposition. And that’s okay. For them, writing is an uncomfortable exercise that they are not often required to do, so they have little desire to develop their skills. In many cases, eventually, others will step in to do their writing.

Most writers, new or seasoned, feel like imposters at one time or another. It took me years of writing and a graduate degree to be able to call myself a writer, rather than a “writer type.” So, I empathize with professionals who feel unqualified to express their ideas in writing. And while it’s true, not everyone is a writer, I believe most have the capacity to write well.

All along the wide spectrum of less experienced writers are the variety of accomplished professionals who are embarrassed by their writing skills and want to improve them. I have taught many leaders, who had little confidence in their abilities, but their desire to develop the tools to express their ideas made them model learners. To accomplish this required them to acknowledge their lack of experience in this realm, take some risks, feel vulnerable, and persevere.

Taking feedback

Some people want to learn to write, and some want you write for them. No matter what a person’s desire, at some point, the individual has to hear the feedback on the current state of their skills, and that can be painful. No matter how experienced you are — a page covered in red is always a slug in the gut.

However, when a new writer takes feedback and moves forward in the spirit of collaboration, I see their satisfaction overcoming their frustration and uncertainty. In the process of rewriting, restructuring, and recasting sentences, I witness the growth in the writer.

For example, a friend of mine illustrated and wrote a children’s book and wanted me to look at the copy. He is an extraordinary artist and designer, but he doesn't write much. The book was an attempt to communicate with his children on a difficult topic, and he cared deeply about the message. The emotional force of the story was clearly expressed in his art, and there was a raw beauty and authenticity in words, but the narrative was a little rough.

What was my role in this process? I asked questions. I made observations to help him understand how some lines struck me. I provided a few examples. I suggested how the sections might be structured to make the story more cohesive. I said, “These are some ideas, but you’re the writer.”

I gave him feedback, but feedback is useless unless people value their own writing enough to use it.

Careful, active listeners and thoughtful participants hear feedback, weigh it against their intuition and knowledge, and apply it if the input is true to their vision. My friend listened, made some changes, and passed over others. In the end, his unique perspective emerged through both his art and his words.

Writing teaches humility

As a writer, I don’t always hit the mark. Maybe my idea is convoluted. Maybe my tone is too earnest. No matter how many times I proof, there will always be a typo. I appreciate the art of writing because it reminds me that no one is perfect, and no project is complete on the first pass. You can always improve a piece. Always. Always. Always.

The finest new writers demonstrate an eagerness to learn from feedback, the willingness to explore how language works, and the assertiveness to challenge an outsider’s perspective. They also possess the work ethic to do the unglamorous rewriting behind the scenes that allows a finished product to appear effortlessly beautiful.

Though the people I’ve coached may still not refer to themselves as writers, we were proud of the pieces we worked on together. I think they experienced the mastery of a skill they never thought they had, and that’s a powerful feeling for a learner and a teacher. To me it felt like sharing a simple secret with someone right when they needed it. These writers made my work easy and joyful, and provided me with an important reminder. They were successful because they overcame the daunting fear that they lacked skills, education, information, or creativity. Their perseverance helped them discover that they possessed all those things from the start.

#Storytelling #Teaching #FreelanceWriter #Writers