inner game of writing

Without reflection we say we learn from experience, by doing. Actually we practise through doing, we gain mastery through doing. But we learn by watching.

This was the great insight of Timothy Gallwey’s book the ‘Inner game of tennis’. In fact he was rediscovering what has been known in Japan and other countries for millennia: that by increasing awareness of what you do and what others do leads to learning. By watching others and having a method of watching yourself you learn. Automatically. We have this funny idea, no doubt a product of school, that we need a verbal instruction to prompt us to learn anything. Totally wrong. We learn silently and immediately by watching. I saw one of my godsons doing cartwheels in the small gardenless apartment he lives in. I asked his mother, "who taught him.“ Sh said, "he taught himself- by watching video games.”.

What has this to do with writing?

I think we learn by watching how others write. By reading you mean?

Nope. I think reading is a pretty poor way of learning to write. If it wasn’t wouldn’t all those eggheads who study literature be great writers?

I think we watch other writers by simply COPYING paragraphs/stories/chapters/entire books. Evidence: Robert Louis Stevenson, Raymond Chandler and Hunter S. Thompson. Stevenson copied out work by Walter Scott. Chandler copied dialogue and paragraphs from crime writers he admired. Thompson typed out the whole of Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby and the whole of The Sun also Rises by Hemingway.

My only copying was limited to some paragraphs from Evelyn Waugh’s travel books. But what I did do at an early age was act as the copyist for poet and writer Steve Micalef, the founder of Punk Fanzine Sniffin’ Glue. He’d dictate a story and I’d write it down. I learnt more in a few days doing this than in years of reading and scribbling on my own. I have also taken a book I enjoy and writen an outline for it – to see what an outline for a great book looks like and to see how the author achieved his effects.

How useful are a bunch of tips? Well I find they can be very useful indeed at getting you back on track, stimulating a new idea, helping a new approach. The tip of always exaggerating characters has been a great help to me when I’ve been stuck with dialogue or a good scene. But tips won’t get you all the way. I think the inner game can.

So after you’ve read a book you admire just copy out a favourite paragraph or two. Maybe an entire story. You’ll be surprised that some of the writer’s DNA will enter into you. You’ll feel that you own his style in some way.

How else can you learn by watching others write? I once was able to read (and photocopy) a handwritten essay by Bruce Chatwin- with all his corrections. It showed me a first draft by a famous writer was just as rough as mine were. This was a great boost. I think if you can meet writers and observe them doing ordinary stuff- literary festivals are good for this- just sneak into the hospitality tent as 'press'- if you can you'll think 'if they can do that so can I'. The single best way to get published is to befriend people already published. It becomes your normal frame of reference then.