Does Everyone Have a "Great Novel" in Them?

Once, in my younger and more vulnerable years (as the story goes), I found myself sitting at an MFA reading, across from two businessmen who happened to be the current boyfriends of two of the women who were reading. Both of these women were serious writers—talented and well published. There were some other writers reading their work that night, as well. These writers were less serious and, perhaps, less talented, but all had studied writing at the graduate level in college. When the first woman finished reading, the second woman got up to take her turn, and in that moment of transition between them, Boyfriend #1 (soon to be Ex-boyfriend #1) turned to Boyfriend #2 and said, “Can you believe they’re actually going to school for this stuff?” Boyfriend #2 grinned, nodded, but was smart enough not to say anything more. The implication in their exchange was that writing was not a field worth studying seriously: It’s a hobby—perhaps even a talent you are born with—but not something that should require any formal education. Certainly not three years’ worth at the graduate level.

I’m put to mind now of what my first writing mentor Joan Connor said once when I met with her one afternoon in her office to discuss an early draft of the story collection I was writing for my Master's thesis: “A writer’s apprenticeship is 15 years from the moment you start taking the work seriously.” I wonder what the two yahoos across the table would have thought about that advice.

(Probably not much.)

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In our writing class this past week, we got into a debate over whether or not writing is uniquely undervalued or whether failure to appreciate "degree of difficulty" is a common phenomenon across all occupations (or at least all art). The question stemmed from a passage we’d read in Ann Patchett’s wonderful Kindle Single, The Getaway Car:

          Ordinarily, in a circumstance like this one, in the Masonic Lodge in Preston, Mississippi, I would have just agreed with 
          this woman and sidled off (One great novel, yes, of course, absolutely everyone), but I was tired and bored and there 
          was nowhere to sidle to except the field. . . . “Does everyone have one great floral arrangement in them?” I asked her. 
          “No,” she said. I remember that her gray hair was thick and cropped short and that she looked at me directly, not 
          glancing over at the flowers. “One algebraic proof?” She shook her head. “One Hail Mary pass? One five-minute mile?” 
          “One great novel,” she said. . . . I have learned the hard way not to tell strangers what I do for a living.

The question is whether or not Patchett (and every other writer who complains that most people "just don’t get how hard it is”) is being especially insightful or off-base, maybe even self-indulgent. I can say from experience that I have met a number of people who, upon learning that I am a writer, have said things like, “I should write a novel” or “I might write a novel someday” or “I’d write a book about my life, but I just don’t have the time” (as if time were the only thing standing in their way). Occasionally (though not nearly as often), these people, though they do not write regularly, will refer to themselves as “writers.” 

Note: I do not include my students in this equation. I refer to my students as writers for the duration of my classes, whether they self-identify that way or not, because they are engaged in serious study of the work.

Another anecdote: While in my Master's program, I can recall being told by a Literature Ph. D, on the eve my thesis defense, not to sweat it because, "It's only creative writing."

To claim that these kinds of occurrences are common would be inaccurate. (I don’t talk about writing enough with people for this to even begin to come up.) 

On the other hand, if I were to say that this is an uncommon sentiment when talk does turn to writing, I'd be lying.

I think we can probably all agree that most occupations don’t encounter this brand of wholesale self-delusion. People don’t casually refer to themselves as doctors, accountants, professional athletes, steel mill workers, mechanics, lawyers, architects, or any other profession without some formal training. Sure, your Uncle Shecky might fancy himself a self-taught expert on cars. Most likely, this belief is based on some solid foundation though—trial and error, the information Grandpa Kester passed down to him about the internal combustion engine, and so forth. He has some training. Perhaps quite a bit of training. He’s not going at this blind. And dopey Cousin Dinky, having never picked up a hex wrench in his life, is not likely to join in and start tinkering under the hood. Similarly, people don’t pick up a football, having never thrown one before, and assume they can bomb it as far as Tom Brady. People don’t assume they can mortar a fireplace if they’ve never hefted a stone before. They don’t claim to be able to perform open heart surgery based on some instinctive feeling that “it can’t be all that hard.”

At least, sane adults don’t.

So the more appropriate question may be whether or not encounters like the one that Patchett describes are a common experience among artists in all mediums. Do painters encounter people who believe their work is easy? Musicians? Chefs? Dancers? Recently, I asked a writer friend of mine for her opinion, and she said that she thinks this happens to all artists. There's probably a lot of truth to that. There are a lot of parents, for example, who buy their kids music lessons, dance lessons, etc., and assume that it’s only a matter of time before their child is performing like a pro—the old supply and demand theorem.

There are also a lot of apprentices in any art form who think they are better, more talented than they are. Young painters who think they are destined for greatness. Young musicians who can’t hear the nuances between their performances and the performances of professionals. Young dancers who don’t understand that art is more than getting every step technically correct—there is an indefinable quality that separates competency from greatness. That quality is what we refer to when we say the word “magic.”

Similarly, there are many young writers who think their writing is better than it actually is—some of them even think they are better writers than their teachers who have been doing it a lot longer and who have published books. It’s Artistic Dysmorphic Disorder, and it’s probably common across every high school, college, summer workshop, and MFA program in the country.

But that’s not exactly (or, at least, not exclusively) what Patchett is talking about, as I understand it. It's a whole other problem, and one we might discuss in more detail down the road. For right now, I think what Patchett is referring to is a phenomenon that is unique to writing.

Hear me out.

In the above examples, we have people who are already studying an art form, and their egos are bigger than they should be. But in Patchett’s example, we are dealing with people who have never written a word in their lives, yet they still assume that they can somehow sit down and pump out a novel the way she does, as long as the desire is strong in them. So let’s go back to the previous examples.

Are there people who, having never held a paint brush before, having never dipped it in paint, believe they can create a piece of art that looks like this?

Starry Night Over The Rhone, Vincent Van Gogh (c. 1888)

Are there people who, having never touched finger to piano key, believe they can somehow just sit down and play this?

If there are, they comprise a much smaller population than the folks who, having never written anything beyond an email or a grocery list, feel they can sit down and peck out something like this if given enough time and a large enough thesaurus:

          “He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold 
          relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing 
          black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. 
          Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” 
                                                                                                                         ―Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Now, you might be thinking, but we all have some experience writing. And you’d be correct. We all write every day. But the difference between writing an email and writing a novel—between intuitive writing and conscious, artful writing—is like the difference between bouncing a red rubber ball and shooting the game-winning three-pointer during the NBA finals. And besides, haven't we all played with finger paints or tooted on the recorder in first grade, and yet we somehow realize it doesn’t make us Picasso or Charlie Parker?

So why this phenomenon with writing, and what do we say when these people come up to us with claims that every person has a “great novel” in them? The question is not could they (with the proper training and dedication) come to discover they have a great novel in them? The question is do they have one in them right now--are they entitled to have one for no other reason than that they are a living, breathing human being? The answer, of course, is “No.” The same goes for a great poem, essay, short story, memoir, etc. Great writing stands on the shoulders of craft. Even if a person does not take classes formally, he or she can still become "craft educated" through intensive reading and through a lot of trial and error. (In fact, reading and writing remain our best educators.)

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Is it worth trying to explain any of this? Is there any value in arguing on behalf of our art as work? Or should we just smile and nod? What do you think, Dear Reader? Post your replies in the comments section.