WRITERS FORUM

Question: What is the most useful or memorable advice a teacher has given you about the craft of writing--and what was the circumstance?

"Tenth grade English class. Staples High School, Westport, Connecticut. Miss Viola Higgins, my English teacher. Fall, 1952. She said, looking up from something I'd written: 'You can write, Squires. I mark on a curve, but I want you to know that you're on your own curve, separate from the class, and it's based on what you turn in versus what I think you can turn in at your best. So be careful--you can flunk this course!' I was more than careful, I put in what most of the kids might have thought was an insane amount of time on my writing, then and ever after. That was fifty years ago, and I've always thought that what she said helped me set my course in life. I've never wanted to be anything other than a writer." Conrad Squires

"In Jane Mead's 'Advanced Poetry Writing' course at Wake Forest University, she told us to 'listen for the music' in the poems we were reading, and her approach was transforming. I had listened for rhyme and rhythm, and for the beat. I had counted syllables, both stressed and unstressed, in my studies and writing, but never listened for the musical quality of the human voice. And what transformation this kind of listening brings. Making syncopation of enjambment, one can actually hear a poet sing." Helen Losse

"The advice itself was fairly innocuous, seemingly noncommital. After a class where my work was raked over the coals, the teacher, a wonderful poet in Philadelphia named Alexandra Grilikhes, walked over to me and said, in her characteristically subdued way, 'I think you can handle it.' But it really wasn't so much what she said. It was her entire presence, so dauntingly perceptive, so intensely focused on her students' possibility. She was an unconventional thinker and a daring artist who always found a way to recognize what was (at least potentially) genuine in each student's writing. At the same time, she was rigorous enough to take you seriously. When you walked out of her class, you felt both humbled and empowered." Miranda Till

"I remember vividly when my advisor in graduate school said that my writing resembled the work of an 'autistic.' I was a doctoral student at Lesley University and had assumed my writing was at least satisfactory. Therefore, I was confused and stunned by my advisor's comment. After I timidly asked for clarification, she explained that I seemed to be writing to myself. I seemed to have little awareness that other people did not know what I knew. I had been so immersed in esoteric philosophical texts that I failed to explain concepts that had become second nature to me but were completely new to most readers.

To remedy the situation, my teachers insisted I read aloud to them so they might ask questions regarding various parts of my essays. The experience led to a growing sense of audience in my work. I began to anticipate what questions might arise and what kinds of responses my statements might evoke. The awareness of an audience completely changed the way I approached writing." Wendy Campbell