Some people are bad writers, and they should be discouraged

There was once a very famous workshop that was taught by a very famous writer. And on the final day of this workshop, the writer would point to each aspirant and announce whether they should keep writing or should quit. Just that, a quick summary of their flaws, followed by a judgment: “But you do have talent” or “You should consider doing something else.” Students were not required to participate in this ritual: they were certainly allowed to leave the room. But many chose to remain, because they wanted to know—they wanted to know if they had it, that ineffable thing, that spark, that voice.

Such rituals are no longer allowed. They were banned by the organizers of this workshop, because of...of...of political correctness! And coddling! Mollycoddling!

In the opinion of this famous writer, some people are bad writers, and they should be discouraged. There was too much encouragement in this world. He believed that he could see clearly who was good and who was bad, and he didn’t see much reason to encourage the ones who were bad. The best thing he could do for the talentless was to release them into the wild to seek other professions.

This famous writer had needed no encouragement. He’d always known he wanted to write. As an eleven year old, raised in a lower-middle-class home (the son of a postal worker), he had camped out in a library and read War and Peace. By age sixteen, he had read Ulysses. Along the way he wrote ten novels, most of them terrible. When he finally wrote a good one he took a train to the city—he was nineteen at this point—and knocked on the door of various editors until he found someone who’d give his book a read. It was published several years later to respectful notices. Through his twenties, he published a series of well-received books. Sales weren’t incredible, but he made enough to support himself, and he never felt particularly poor. He had it. He had drive. Determination. Talent. He had something that very few of his students possessed—and without that thing, there was no reason to write.

Increasingly, he made a living by teaching writing, and he tried various methods of teaching these students about the determination they would need in order to succeed. But it was pointless—they were basically lazy. They thought vaguely that they’d enjoy writing. They thought they were better than regular work, and being a writer seemed somehow easier. For them, writing was like a lottery ticket. They scratched away, hoping perhaps this activity would lead to a better life. The famous writer found their passivity to be disgusting. If they wanted a better life, then they should go out and get that life! For many of these people, they’d be better off leaving their wives, leaving their husbands, leaving their jobs, buying a van, and actually experiencing life—getting whatever thing from life they hoped writing would give them. But instead these grub-like creatures exhausted their vital energies by attending workshop after workshop after workshop after workshop, where they wasted the time of real writers like himself.

That was his opinion.

He felt not a shred of guilt over the tears he’d caused in this workshop. He was told that he’d snuffed out some dreams—that people sometimes came home from his workshops unable to write. Good. That was the point. Nobody could’ve ever extinguished his own dreams—he’d faced rejections, difficulties, of course. Most of his oeuvre was out of print. But he still sat down every day and wrote—he had plenty left to say. He was indomitable.

One friend, Nina, tried to remonstrate with him. “Hank”—his name was Henry—“Hank, I didn’t write a word until I was over forty. I went to workshops just like this one, where I was praised and encouraged. Do you remember Malcolm? I hung forever onto the kind words he said about my early stories.”

“But your stories were good,” said Hank.

“And I had other people who weren’t kind to me, and I’ve never forgotten them. I was on an awards jury during the year when Nancy’s earthquake book was published—you remember that horrible book, for which she had such high hopes?—I was terrified it would come up for discussion. I never could’ve given her an award. Never. It would’ve felt like shaking the hand of my own executioner. She spoke to me like I was senile, during that one fellowship—do you remember? She jabbed her finger at my manuscript, at some trivial typographic error, saying, ‘You really, really need be careful—no writer should ever turn in something so shoddy. Never. You need to double- and triple-check every single sentence’—she kept harping on this point. She thought I wasn’t worthy of her time, because I was old, I was married, I had a child. Do you ever wonder, Hank, whether I would’ve passed muster with you then?”

“You’re being absurd. I read your first collection—some of the first stories you wrote—they were exceptional. You had talent from the first.”

“But not to Nancy. Not to many editors. They didn’t see it. And that’s fine, but they used that judgement to decide I wasn’t worthy of respect. I don’t hate someone for rejecting my art, but what you do to these children—it’s not a good act, Hank.”

“I don’t do it anymore,” he said. “They complained. And they weren’t children. Many of them were thirty or forty years old. I was helping them. Can you imagine being so old and still waiting for a pat on the head?”

“Yes!” she said. “I can imagine it, that is what I am trying to say.”

“Well...” he said. “You endured. There was no lasting harm, from whatever Nancy did.”

“There was harm,” she said. “People will carry forever the memory of how you treated them.”

“Good!” he said. “That is the point. To be remembered. To do something worthy of notice. To stand for something, so it’s worth remarking-upon.”

“Well I could never do it,” she said. “And I’ve seen many people go on, who I didn’t think were good, and they had fine careers.”

“Careers writing trash,” he said. “That never should’ve been written. How often has someone truly surprised you?”

“Often enough that I don’t etch my judgements into stone.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

“You know the real harm,” she said. “Is that one of these students will write about you. And everyone who reads it will know exactly who the story is about. You’ll have written twenty or thirty books and won ever-so-many awards, and all anyone will remember is this one story about how you conducted workshop.”

“If all they remember is that I stood for something,” he said. “Then I think that’s good.”

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