Just like riding a bike, I guess.

I learned how to write much like I learned how to ride a bike. In the beginning some kind soul tried to help me, and after a few days of constant failure, got frustrated and impatient, and finally left me alone to figure it out myself. I remember riding that miniature bike endlessly up and down the parking lot of a small apartment complex in Clearfield and falling, crying, and bleeding, and bleeding, and bleeding.

My experience with writing has been much the same. It began with my well-intentioned, but incredibly naïve, 7th grade English teacher Captain Shouper at Riverside Military Academy. At some point between corporal punishment and public humiliation, the young Captain decided to expose us grunts to the finer points of Shakespearian sonnets. He enlightened us on how to write poetry by following Shakespeare’s format exactly. We all turned in a few poems, mostly about “love,” football, or some other junk, and after a couple of days the Capt’s motivation withered, and the program disappeared. Like my bike riding experience, I was left alone to work out the problem for myself.

I kept falling, and kept getting hurt, but over time the wobbly bike rides began to straighten out until one day the tiny, battered training wheels just snapped off and I rode by myself for a bit, until crashing into a curb. The cookie cutter sonnets evolved into crappy love poems, which then progressed into shallow detective stories, and finally into the breathtaking literary perfection that you are experiencing right now.

The problems that students who come into the writing center might have a lot to do with apathy or plain old lack of talent. Or they might have to do with a lack of practice. Writing isn’t an art that can be taught by beating students over their heads with thick volumes of “Classic” literature. It also isn’t a talent that can be given to somebody through endless explanations of writing theory and techniques. Writing is hard, and with the exception of a few smarmy know-it-alls, is a skill that comes only after years of falling down, messing up, and writing countless bad love poems. Most students have not done this by the time they begin college and knowing this might help the tutor a little when tutoring.

In order to pass their “obstacles,” students need to realize that good writing only comes after practice and work. To do this, however, they have to actually care. Therein lies the problem.

Unfortunately at the time of writing this wonderful blog I have only tutored seven students, most of who were either in ESL, or just wanted me to sign their papers for them. I imagine that when and if I get to tutor a struggling writer who is genuinely trying to write then I will be able to influence them by letting them know that their art will take time to develop; and that with time, that which they are trying to say may evolve from the convoluted mess on the paper into a clear, meaningful piece of literature.