Can you learn how to write?

I don’t know why this debate keeps coming up: people asking whether writers are born or made, and whether there’s any point teaching writing.

Actually, I do know why: it’s because some people still believe that real writers are born with an innate gift and don’t need any help refining their genius.

Myths we tell ourselves about writers is a complex story (one we discuss in the Cultivating Creativity retreat).

But this one – that writers are born this way (to quote Lady Gaga) – is a story that can stop people from trying to write, or at the opposite end, assume they are a genius and don’t need to get any better. Either way, in most cases, it’s simply not helpful.

In On Writing, Stephen King famously said, “while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one” (2000, Hodder & Staughton, p. 136). King believes that a great writer is a rare beast with exceptional vision and voice.

I’m not sure I agree, but here’s the thing: writers can’t all be great. Never have been, in the history of literature. We don’t all need to be Sappho, Austen, Tolstoy, or Morrison.

But we can become more accomplished than when we began. We can become good. Or even just good enough. With enough “hard work, dedication, and timely help.”

Yes, some may have some genetic predisposition to creativity. And some people seem to be natural storytellers. My grandfather didn’t get the chance to finish primary school – he worked in a factory from nine years old, to support a single mother and many sisters – but he was a wonderful storyteller. He didn’t learn it from teachers or books. He learned it from the culture around him: from other storytellers, from songs and poems and Buster Keaton movies, from his Irish mother, and his imagination.

Some people might’ve been brought up by artists, so they are nurtured and supported from a young age. They are part of a creative community, inhaling its values and possibly some of its skills and tools.

Nature and nurture mean some of us get a head start. Maybe. That doesn’t mean other people don’t and never can make creative work.

Some writers grow up with no support for our aspirations – no access to mentors or writing groups or even supportive teachers and librarians. Some writers face huge systemic barriers like racism. Some writers have put their own creative dreams aside while they were busy, perhaps for decades, supporting everyone else.

Others are encouraged every step of the way, promoted and endorsed, and know how to work a room.

But it doesn’t matter who you are and what your background provided. Very few of us can write perfectly, intuitively, brilliantly, from the start without consciously mastering a few vital tools and concepts.

That’s one reason so many projects are unfinished. We may be great at drafting – the idea is fascinating, we blurt out the initial story, race through a few chapters, but then it peters out, or we don’t know what to do next. What we need are specific skills and techniques to get past that point, if we get stuck and especially when we’re revising.

The more technical control we have throughout, the easier the whole project will feel, and the better the final manuscript.

Here’s an example. In my masterclasses, I find I often have to explain the difference between plot and structure. Lightbulbs go off around the room. People say “Oh my God” out loud. But none of that’s a secret – we all know it, deep down, from all the stories we’ve read or seen. It’s just that we haven’t thought about what it means for the way we arrange the elements of our own stories. Once we’re conscious of it and controlling both, a whole lot of other pieces fall into place.

The technical requirements of writing a memoir, novel or short story (let alone poetry) are often things we understand from reading, so it feels intuitive when we’re writing. But it’s not. It’s more like knowledge we already have – precious knowledge – we can build on, to get to a point of mastery.

That’s the ideal: you know and have mastered all the technical elements, tools and techniques you need, you have them ready in your writer’s toolbox, and you can deploy them when you need them.

None of that comes as an optional extra in the creative gene lottery prize. Yes, it comes from reading, but it also comes from consciously deciding to research and learn about the tools and techniques, the styles and forms and genres, you want to use. Applying what you learn is crucial.

What you can’t necessarily get from reading – unless you read very closely and intentionally, also a good idea – is how to do the thing yourself, in the context of your story. It’s understanding in detail the techniques your favourite authors use and why, and how to use them in your own work: word by word, sentence by sentence, scene by scene.

Think of all the big things you’ve learned in your adult life. A language, maybe, or a new sport, how to knit, how to be a parent, how to do your your boring tax return, how to use social media or organise a school fair or manage a project at work. None of it simple. Learning new stuff is constant and it should be, otherwise we atrophy. I never stop learning about writing.

So yes, you can learn how to write, and specifically you can learn how to write better, to write the way you want to write. You don’t need a degree. (Though that’s a very good idea – I have several and each one taught me so much.) You don’t need to spend a million bucks.

Everything you read, everything you write, makes you a better writer.

Join your local writers centre. Sign up for email newsletters or authors’ Substacks. Order books from your public library. Go to bookshop talks and literary events. Search YouTube for author interviews. There’s an endless array of courses, classes and workshops, books, websites, writers’ groups, and social media accounts to support you in your learning.

Listen. Read. Learn.

I mean, why wouldn’t you?

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” 

— Ernest Hemingway