Too cool for school? Never.

photo by Erik Sanner @ #hashtagclass, 3/17/10

As this week of free advice on artist’s statements comes to a close, here’s Two Things I’ve Learned: 1) Don’t give your work away for free (artists, writers, this means You); even if it’s for a nominal fee, your work must get valued. 2) Try not to treat your attempts at writing-to gain-clarity-and-objectivity as a chore, and, when objectivity comes from others, don’t treat it as harsh criticism—but rather as a gift. If it’s given to you by someone you feel safe with, insights are gold.

How can you start writing? This, from “Writing Without Teachers” by Peter Elbow (a book I love to quote):

Most people’s relationship to the process of writing is one of helplessness. First, they can’t write satisfactorily or even at all. Worse yet, their efforts to improve don’t seem to help. It always seems that the amount of effort and energy put into a piece of writing has no relation to the results…

The commonsense, conventional understanding of writing is as follows. Writing is a two-step process. First you figure out your meaning, then you put it into language….first try to figure out what you want to say; don’t start writing till you do; make a plan; use an outline; begin writing only afterward. Central to this model is the idea of keeping control, keeping things in hand…

Elbow doesn’t like clean. Elbow likes messy in his teaching process, and so do I.

I contend that virtually all of us carry this model of the writing process around in our heads and that it sabotages our efforts to write…this idea of writing is backwards. That’s why it causes so much trouble. Instead of a two-step transaction of meaning-into-language, think of writing as….”

So, what do you think he says?

I just read my own advice, above, (about not giving away your talents for free) and realize I can’t just give away all this writing advice to you until you pick up a pen and try. Unless people take an active, not a passive stance, then my advice is all just lecturing, and talk talk talk (you know, the stuff in Grad School?). Talk is cheap. And Writing is hard work. I’m just saying that writing doesn’t have to feel useless and beyond you and not fun.

PostScript, another conclusion I’ve come to, after this week: The written word is ultimately more powerful than art when it comes to affecting a fellow human being, social change, and fostering new things. Thanks for putting up with my rants. I hope they helped just a little, or at least got you started writing.

(Thanks to Erik for his documentation—as always! Check out his new blog of archived projects.)