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OPINION PIECE
Do Writing Courses Destroy the Magic?
Can Ignorance Ever Trump Knowledge?
There is a new writer here on Medium. I found a story of his yesterday about his grandfather. It isn’t polished. It isn’t even Grammarly-checked. But my goodness, how it touched me. How it made me laugh and cry. How it wormed its way into my heart, where it will abide.
And here’s the thing. There is lots of advice here on Medium on how to be a better writer. I clicked on a great one yesterday by Esme Raine Harlow. It includes a link to a live editing session, where author and editor Tom Bromley demonstrates the first things he looks for when he critiques a manuscript.
By the end of the video, I wanted to slit my wrists and give up writing.
I once read a poem that stirred my soul. I returned to it when it came up as part of the curriculum on the Open University foundation course I signed up for in a fit of feeling semi-educated. The tutors dissected it and explained exactly how the author had used different poetic techniques to make it “work”.
The trouble is, in doing that, it lost its magic for me. The verses that had spoken to me became cold and lifeless as they were put under the harsh light of scrutiny and analysis.
