How we learn to write

In class on Tuesday, one of my writing students who has been wrestling with her memoir had a breakthrough, and it made me ponder how we learn to write. There are the obvious things that we've all heard, of course: first of all we learn through writing, writing, writing. And through reading, reading, reading. I'm a firm believer in the long years of practice.

I know I learnt a lot about writing through workshopping and seeing other people's comments and their line edits. I know some writing teachers don't do line edits because they don't feel that they have the right to cross out somebody else's words, but I think it's an important way of showing how to improve the flow of words/information/narrative. The student is, of course, free to take your advice or not, but to me not line editing is a wasted opportunity to show the students (rather than tell them) how to improve. All very well to just write "awkward" next to a line, but some don't have the craft knowledge yet to know how to deal with that.

I'm a subscriber to the theory that our learning proceeds in a slow gentle curve that eventually plateaus out, until the day when another thing clicks and you jump up a level, up a straight cliff-face, onto another gentle incline curving up. And so we proceed in a series of curves and plateaus with the odd leaps that take us to the next level. And my student jumped one of those levels in class. Most years, at some point, at least one student will make such a leap, and it's a heartening thing for a teacher to see, because it means that all that we're saying and doing has at least had some effect. For me, it's moments like those that make teaching worthwhile. I love my students -- I find it inspiring to be among like-minded people, but these moments when you see such tangible evidence of improvement, teaching becomes something more than a job I enjoy doing.

A few years ago, I had two students who were close friends in my class: one was the most eager student I'd ever seen and so keen to improve her skills. She was always asking me what she could do to improve her work. She and her friend were pretty much on the same level and, as luck would have it, it was her friend that made the leap during class that year. The first girl was glad for her friend, but became increasingly frustrated at her own lack of progress. We can't will these jumps; they happen when we've assimilated some piece of knowledge, deconstructed and reconstructed it and come up with something new -- an insight, an epiphany, a light-bulb moment. I know at times I've experienced that frustration: knowing I've needed something more in my writing, but not quite what that thing is or how to get it. I had to tell my student not to lose heart, but to be patient. Patience does bring us improvements as long as we continue that essential practice. We all learn at different rates. Sometimes these leaps come through trying something different -- a completely different approach. For my student it was trying present tense instead of past. Present tense allowed her to relive the moment and so to capture it as if it were happening right there, right then. It doesn't mean her story necessarily has to stay in present tense, but for now it is helping her unlock the door to her own creativity. She's bubbling with excitement about it, and so am I.

Past perfect

Past perfect is one of those difficult tenses. Sorry to bore you all, but today I'm in the mood for a grammar rant. (Wearing the grammar teacher and editor hats today.) I love tenses. I love all their different names and the way they interconnect, and how you use them differently. For the uninitiated, past perfect is a tense formed with "had" + past participle of a verb, eg had walked, had danced, had brought, had eaten, had ridden etc.

Past perfect is used for actions completed in the past before another action in the past. It's like a second step back in time. For example, if I'm writing in present tense and want to indicate a past event, I use simple past: Today I go to the milk bar; yesterday I went to the bakery. But if I'm writing in past tense, then I can't just use simple past, and need to show another step backwards: Yesterday I went to the milk bar; the day before I had gone to the bakery. Should be simple, right?

I remember someone saying to me when I first started taking writing seriously that you should never use "had had", that the second had was never needed. I know now that this was a stupid piece of advice. Even then it felt wrong, and so when I wrote my fledgling stories I would contract the first one and use I'd or she'd or whatever, just because I could tell instinctively that I really did need both verbs, but people tended to let me keep the two verbs. Perhaps where this advice stemmed from -- or at least should have stemmed from -- is that when you segue into past perfect, which indicates a second step back in time, you only have to use the had the first one or two times and then can slip into simple past tense. Simple past is much more direct. Too many "hads" bog down a sentence. Pace stagnates when it should be racing. Of course the trick is to signal clearly to the reader when you are returning to the "now" of the story, whether it's in present or past tense.

But the problem I see often in student work is use of past perfect when simple past will do. This is usually because a student is writing in present tense and so should use simple past for past events, but I think they're so used to writing in past tense that they take that second step backwards when only one is necessary. They'll also use past perfect when they really want present perfect (have gone, have fished, have eaten, have drunk). Obviously for some it's tricky stuff. I'm lucky because it's always come naturally to me. Sometimes I think it only affects them on paper -- that they can handle tenses properly in speech, but this isn't always the case. My tip, as with any problem when writing, to improve your tenses? Easy: read lots. Read widely. And pay attention to what the author is doing.

Why I'm tense about tense

The other day Sir Talkalot asked me to look over an assignment he'd written. Now, it was a creative piece, and he considers himself a reasonably talented writer -- he is of course very modest, as all good children are! Anyway, his story wasn't bad, but the tense was all over the place. This is something I sometimes see in my students' writing, and it is usually when they are trying to write in present tense, because they like the immediacy of present, yet they somehow keep falling back into past, and they don't understand why. In fact, they don't even know they have done it until I point it out.

I explain that it's because so much fiction is written in past tense that it's our natural fallback position. Most of us can write in past without even thinking about it. But try to write in present, and those who are not as strong grammatically yoyo between tenses faster than you can "walk the dog" (old yoyo trick, for the uninitiated). And that's before we start thinking about the differences between present perfect and past perfect.

When I said this to Sir Talkalot, he looked at me a bit puzzled and said, "But I was trying to write in past tense."

Oh.

This I hadn't expected. But it made me speculate about my whole concept of fallback positions -- not because I think I'm wrong. I don't. (Perhaps proving that I can be just as modest as my son!) But because my concept is based on the fact that in the past most fiction *has been* written in past tense. These days authors, and especially, I think, children's and YA authors are writing more and more in present tense. This means that our younger generations are being more and more exposed to present tense writing, and consequently to less and less past tense writing, though I would think past tense would still win out.

When I was at Clarion a few years ago, one of the tutors despaired at how much present-tense writing was around, and said how noticeable it was. And I said that surely it was only noticeable because there is so much past-tense writing around that present-tense still sticks out as something different. We are so used to past that it is an invisible tense in a way that present can only aspire towards. Present tense calls attention to itself. It feels edgier, and so many writers, for this reason, choose to use it. Frankly, I think that to use this as your sole justification for writing in this tense is as specious as to argue that we shouldn't write in it because there is too much of it around (when clearly it is visible because we're so used to past tense -- though maybe this ignores the question of whether there might be a reason that past was the favoured tense for so long).

But what does this drift towards present-tense in published material mean for writers? Will young writers with more exposure to present tense come through their reading with a better handle on tense or a worse? Will that lack of a fallback position strengthen or weaken them? Without doubt, the grammar geeks will be fine. But what about the others? It certainly bears thinking about.