Drink It
An Interview
with author Patricia Ann McNair

Speaking as a seasoned writer and a college professor, Patricia McNair, the author of “Drink It,” believes that the greatest challenge in teaching people to write is that many believe this craft cannot be taught.

“It's hard to get through to a student who isn't willing to actively engage in the responsibility of writing something, to make choices, to consider their choices, techniques and execution, to do the real work of it all,” says McNair. Likewise, she notes that it is equally difficult to teach “overly taught” writers—those who rely most heavily on their high school lit classes to guide their writing.

Writing can most definitely be taught, McNair feels, and it is unfair to the craft to assert otherwise.  “Is there any other art form that gets this question thrown at it so often?  You can teach people to play piano, you can train vocal students, you can teach someone how to draw, how to sculpt, how to throw pots, how to act—why is that some folks say writing CAN'T be taught?  Maybe talent can't be taught, perhaps you either have it or you don't, I'm not sure.  But just as in the other art forms, a thoughtful and engaged teacher can help nurture talent, can teach technique and skills, help students learn how to read better and more like a writer, teach them how to think in a considered and useful way about their own work.”

Yet, McNair explains, like any other craft, writing must be taught with an eye for the basics.  The emphasis must be placed on “practice, on reading, on deep consideration of the work in progress, on trusting your own sense of voice and of story, and of finally making informed choices based on all of these things.

“I don't think the standard workshop methodology—the type where you hand out a dozen copies of your work to your ‘peers’—is a very effective way to teach writing, though.  And so when folks say that writing can't be taught, I'd have to say that writing probably can't be taught by using this method only. I don't think writing can be taught by committee or by collaboration.  A student has to learn to write by himself—by that I mean not in isolation, but by looking at his work as his own, figuring out what his intent with the piece is, what the piece is telling him, finding strategies to fulfill the goals of the piece—all the while with an attention to a wider sense of audience that will help clarify things, and so on.  So a workshop, when it is most effective, is one where a student feels a strong sense of audience in the room and makes use of that, but at the same time doesn't try to write a story to please the group, or write to their comments, or worse, to their suggestions.

“Someone once told me that there are two kinds of teachers—those who try to teach you to do what they do, and those who try to teach you to do what you can do.  I'd like to be the latter.”

—Corey Ginsberg