When I was young I used
to love thinking up stories. I would spend class days day dreaming about new
super heroes and ninja warriors, the kinds of things I’d watch when I got home
from class, and think up stories for them to live in. I remember one day I
spent five hours in my room writing and drawing a comic about a frog who had all
his limbs replaced with jetpacks and the crime fighting adventures he’d get
himself into. To tell you the truth all this attention to the make believe is
probably the reason I never did so well in school as a kid.
I never really stopped telling stories. I’d fill my
journals with little ideas or characters that I had no room for yet but maybe
one day I could find a home for. I’ve heard people say you don’t learn how to
write stories you just wait for inspiration to strike. I don’t really agree
with this. There’s a lot I did to improve my writing and there’s a lot I still
can do.
As I grew up and realized this was a passion of mine I
wanted to learn how to improve. I started by reading interviews from the
authors I admired the most. Mostly I was looking for any and all sage advice I
could find. The vast majority of them said the same thing: write. Write every
day, write often, finish what you write, and move on to the next thing. So
that’s what I did. I gave myself a schedule, write every day for one hour, and
I kept to it. It took me awhile to realize it but writing is a lot like
exercising. Nobody walks into the gym and lifts huge amounts of weights their
first day, nobody runs a marathon and expects to do well their first time. So
as such I learned to accept that I would struggle at first, that my best work
would come later and that I was working up towards it. I accepted that writing
was like a muscle, not some magical inspiration generator, and that I had to
work my creativity muscle.
Next I read a lot. I didn’t just read books I enjoyed I
read books I hated and I analyzed why I hated them. I learned what to avoid and
from the good books I learned what worked. I read things like “Alan Moore’s
guide to writing comics.” A book about ways to think up new innovative methods
for writing comic books, though admittedly the material was applicable to any
medium.
I think writing stories and teaching have a lot in
common. Writing requires a lot of organization, you have to keep track of all
the characters, the settings, plots, ect. Teaching is a lot like that. You have
to remember all your students, all their needs and accommodations, you have to
organize your time and your ideas, and then there’s all the papers you have to
organize. However I don’t think that is the most important similarity.
Teaching and writing are, at their core, about one thing:
getting your point across. As a writer you have to write a story that puts
ideas in the reader’s head with out over explaining the symbols and metaphors.
No one wants to read a book where all the author does is tell you what happens
instead of showing you. The same thing goes for teaching. One can’t simply tell
a student the meaning of a poem, or a show them a math equation. They have to
present the material in such a way that the students can replicate it and show
understanding. For both of them it’s not just about how great of an idea you
think it is but also clearly you present it to your audience.
I think that’s what I like the most about teaching and
writing. They both depend a lot on you. With writing there are only so many
plots, really when you break it down there are really only 2 plots in writing,
what makes it unique is how you write it and what you bring to it. With
teaching all the content is already there for you. You don’t have to write the
poems you teach or discover the formulas or anything like that but how you put
your own twist on it is what makes you a good teacher. There are plenty of
resources out there to help you teach, much like the books that taught me how
to write, but ultimately it’s about what you can bring to the table.
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