When Precious Becomes the Enemy of Progress

While the top definition of “precious” in Merriam-Webster dictionary is “of great value or high price”—i.e., precious jewels—the definition I’m most prone to use in my everyday life is the third listed entry, “excessively refined,” aka “Affected,” which reads, “having or showing an attitude or mode of behavior that is not natural or genuinely felt; artificially or falsely.” 

I, unfortunately, use this term most often when dealing with fellow writers, and maybe have somewhat given my own definition to it because while I genuinely think there’s a lot of pretense and posturing in the literary world, I also believe that this pretense and posturing—and acting like the craft of writing is the most important thing is the world—is so prevalent that many people think that’s what makes a writer good (and too many people fixate on what a good writer should be, rather than just being a good writer, if that makes sense?). Therefore, I consider any sort of behavior that elevates writing—important, vital even, but not curing cancer, feeding the hungry, and not physically taxing—above its paygrade, anything that makes writing laborious for laboriousness’s sake to be precious. To wit: agonizing for hours over one sentence, being unable to hit a deadline because you feel your muse wasn’t sparked, and writing on a typewriter in the age of word processors are all annoying and precious. 

I think I’m doubly cynical about writing precociousness due to the content I’ve been predominantly writing over the past few years: political op-eds and marketing copy. The goal of both mediums is to connect to the broadest audience. You worry more about someone connecting with your stance and wanting to read more vs. meter, figurative language, or literary allusions. The goal of most of the writing I do is to be accessible. It’s also very deadline-based. Sometimes you just submit what you have when you’re asked to and can’t spend too much time perfecting your word choice (this isn’t to say that I submit shit work, just that you have to adopt the perfection-is-the-enemy-of-progress mindset). Accessibilities and deadlines don’t allow much time for preciousness. 

This is a long-winded introduction to me wanting to talk about a writing class I recently took and how annoyingly precious the entire experience was. 

It was disappointing. The class—which was taken through an unnamed publication—was an online course consisting of two sessions by a very successful author whose work I admire. I signed up specifically because they were teaching it (which maybe, in retrospect, was a mistake?)—I was excited to get some insights into their writing process, mindset, and what they thought about how sentence structure could shape how readers digest stories (I’m speaking in vagaries because if I ever do go on to become a celebrated novelist, I don’t want to alienate this particular publication or author just yet).  I wanted to learn something tangible, something usable. 

What I got was a heaping dose of preciousness. Said writer spent the first 20 minutes talking about what kind of mindset they need to be into to get “the muse” to strike. It involved things like quiet self-reflection, the perfect locale, and seemingly maybe an hour or so of setup before they started working. Again, perhaps because I mostly write in a very deadline-driven way, this isn’t the kind of luxury I can afford. I’d say it’s probably similar for anyone not at the very top of the writing food chain (though, from what I understand, even most book deals involved deadlines—sometimes you just have to finish shit, no matter if your chakra is aligned or the Starbucks you’re in is noisy as fuck, you know?). The online class chat was filled with students chiming in about the best meditative music, best tea blends, best-centering poetry, and best upstate NY Air BNBs that helped them get in the zone.  

The instructor made sure to stress that you can’t rush writing. You can’t make yourself write good sentences. They have to come from within you when they are ready. This kind of shit actively makes me mad because it perpetuates this myth that I’ve alluded to already: the writing must be laborious in some way. That it’s a somewhat unattainable art form that only those touched by the muse (i.e., those who have the means to enroll in an MFA program and spend 2-4 years thinking about only writing) can attain. It’s sort of a weird form of gatekeeping—I have these gifts; you might not—which is the antithesis of the class, right? If you can’t teach me how to rush writing or how to make myself write good sentences, why am I paying you money? 

The instructor then pivoted to what I thought would be actual instruction: reviewing some well-written sentences and discussing why they were so impactful. They started by using a sentence from one of their works and spent a good 40 minutes breaking down how they made every single word choice. Someone in the chat asked them how long it took them to write a typical sentence. Their answer? 20-40 minutes. I’m calling bullshit. Now, maybe this person does have the time to do this, but from what I know about this writer, they’ve had 3-5 novels published (which means various drafts of each), teach at the university level, run a small business, and are a parent. They are also not much older than me. Unless they have zero social life (and I know nothing about them socially), I just don’t see that they could afford to spend 20-40 minutes on every sentence of a, say, 50,000-word manuscript. Do you know when you spend that amount of time on single-word choices? When you’re writing slogans. Or website copy. Small snippets where readers can analyze every word. Typically, the more you write, the less time you have to devote to every single word choice…but maybe that’s just the ramblings of a lowly copywriter. 

After showing us how they spent 20-40 minutes constructing a single sentence, this instructor then got sidetracked and started talking about their favorite sentences from classic literary works. They never told us how these sentences impacted the work or readers' digestion of it. They never discussed how to structure a sentence for a particular impact or outcome. They just talked about how beautiful each sentence was. Then, each time they introduced a new sentence by a new author, other students would swarm the chat, saying how said sentence reminded them of a sentence by increasingly obscure authors—the whole thing was a real literary prowess dick-measuring contest. 

So, the story's moral is that I learned nothing and felt like I wasted my money. I didn’t even bother going to the second class session (ostensibly, I have access to it via recording for the next 90 days…but I feel in my heart that it will go unwatched). There were no tools or strategies I could use. And there were no real insights from this admittedly very talented writer, who I do think a little less of now but whose work I’ll still read when they churn them out…which they do at pretty regular intervals…for someone who is spending so much time finding their muse and dedicating 20-40 minutes on each sentence. It makes me wonder if all this preciousness, this affection, is, as I pointed out in my intro, just the performance of what a writer should be. Because in today’s world, and especially in the cut-throat world of publishing, it just doesn’t feel sustainable. 

Editor’s Note: As a former teacher, I fucking hate “those who can’t do, teach.” Being an effective teacher is a skill set that takes work to achieve (I’m increasingly on the you-really-don’t-need-a-college-degree-for-lots-of-jobs-that-purport-you-do bandwagon, but I think teachers absolutely should be trained in instruction methodology, the psychology of learning, conflict resolutions, etc.), and doesn’t happen overnight (now, I did see a meme recently that said “those who can’t do, become realtors”...and that made me chuckle). But I feel like there might be some fire there regarding writers. It does feel like when writers have a lag time between assignments or are having writer’s block, they often turn to teaching…and not everyone is cut out for it (and this obviously doesn’t apply to everyone because I’ve taken classes from some writers who were excellent instructors).