A new story about Writing

Any regular reader of this blog will know that new story: writing is not the transmission of information but the creation of knowledge. Writing is not perfectible, and there’s a reason the world’s best writers have the world’s best editors. Grammar is merely one of a great number of concerns in writing, not the central one. “Writing” includes composition, not simply inscription: it begins with thinking about what to say and ends in a reader’s hands, not with drafting. Writing is not an empty container into which content is dumped; the container is the content. Thus, writing is a situated activity responding to particular exigencies, different every time, not a universal skill that can be learned once and “mastered.” Revision is developing writing, not fixing it, and thus a sign of mature writing, not bad writing: most professional writers expect that their first draft is a starting point, not an ending point. Writing is not usually the work of lone geniuses inspired by a muse; writers usually work collaboratively with other writers and especially with readers. Writing is usually not easy for good writers, and it is usually not the kind of thing that ought to be.


--Doug Downs, Bedford Bits, May 23, 2012.