The fact is that it is impossible to “make” somebody love doing one thing or another. How? If one does not love writing, how he can become a great writer? If one does not appreciate reading, how she can become a good reader? I can only think of one option - that is if the person is absolutely pushed to the activity that he does not really appreciate. As I mentioned much earlier, I believe that my D. became a good reader in the medical school, she had no choice, she had to start reading much faster, there are only 24 hours in one day, cannot stretch it. However, the writing takes longer to polish and a good writer has significant advantage in ALL classes, HS, college and beyond …including publishing of the scientific research paper.
@eiholi Re: YouTube and such - If your S absolutely won’t read, he’ll get more mileage out of listening to things that started out as prose vs. things that were designed to be visual (e.g. movies, television, etc.) from the get-go. Try audio books, radio shows, speeches and/or plays.
^^ He reads fine when he has to at school. He listens to and watches short and fun stuff. His favorite book character was Huck from an audiobook, but hated the movie by Mickey Rooney. His current favorite is from a book read at school.
I sense writing is a form of expression and some can express themselves better than others, like some lawyer turned politicians.
"I sense writing is a form of expression and some can express themselves better than others, like some lawyer turned politicians. " - The writing requires lots of practice. If one does not like it, no reading, listening or whatever other activity, will improve his writing. Got to write! Just like any musician needs to practice whatever tool is being used to express his love for music, instrument, voice…the greatest ones had this internal need to play, sing,…or were pushed so hard by the parents that it became the integral part of their lives, but got to be careful there. Simply listening to music will not produce a musician, no ordinary musician, I am not talking about Beethoven here.
Frankly, I have never pushed my kids to do anything, I presented them with the opportunities and that worked out very well, but not any close to the genius level, just normal ordinary people with skills in certain areas…
Writing should be enjoyable. Most of us like to talk and communicate (gossip, Facebook, texting), and more formal writing is just a more complicated technology of communication. Static forms, meaningless assignments, and red-ink editors take a lot of joy out of writing. Fun assignments, dynamic forms, and letting go of editing until the very end help students reclaim to joy of writing. I just assigned a class to write a piece of satire: won’t that be fun to write and read? It will be harder to assess and grade, but to put the joy back in writing, I will be very generous. Other assignments will be more rigorous, but just imagine how silent we would all be if every time we spoke someone corrected us, limited us, or ignored our meaning.
My older son hates writing, but he was always a competent writer. He’s an avid reader and knows what good prose sounds like, he just doesn’t enjoy the process.
Interesting as that’s the exact opposite view of one HS English lit teacher I had who earned a PhD.
Her contention was one can only improve as a writer by being willing to ensure the pain and misery of multiple drafts and harsh critiques from her and other likeminded teachers/Profs. She once said if you’re enjoying the process of writing, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough.
Personally, I don’t agree with he and am in your camp…but several of her students from past classes have become prize winning authors or lit/writing Profs at various colleges.
Reading a lot of well written anything. And then writing.
I second @mackinaw 's suggestion of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”
It’s a must read for any writer. So concise, yet overflowing with useful tools.
I believe that was exactly her point…and one I disagree with.
Some of the best creative art/musical works came about from it coming naturally with a sense of joy and ease.
For instance, rock instrumentalist Eric Johnson recounted he came up with and wrote up the famous rock instrumentalist hit “Cliffs of Dover” in less than 15 minutes after it came to him a dream.
"Interesting as that’s the exact opposite view of one HS English lit teacher I had who earned a PhD.
Her contention was one can only improve as a writer by being willing to ensure the pain and misery of multiple drafts and harsh critiques from her and other like minded teachers/Profs. She once said if you’re enjoying the process of writing, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough."
I’m going to say that the writer who loves writing and wants to improve doesn’t think of doing all those multiple drafts as “pain and misery”. It’s a means to an end. It’s a goal. Their goal. It’s not necessarily “fun” in the traditional sense of the word but it’s certainly not “pain and misery.” OTHER people think it’s pain and misery.
I’m not signing up for marathons but I’m not a runner. Some people weirdly think that’s a good time.
Read, write, repeat.
Cobrat
I don’t think it is fun to learn how to write a dissertation, a high stakes, academic genre used only once under highly evaluative conditions. Even after decades of academic publishing in the humanities, I rarely get true joy out of a first draft of a piece of scholarship (more a sense of accomplishment and occasionally pride), but the first draft is really such a small part of writing in the humanities. The true pleasure is in the revisions, responses, nurturing of ideas, restructuring, and problem solving that comes in developing the initial insights. I just love revision. Sure, not every moment is a giggle, but I wouldn’t write if it was misery and pain. . . And I wouldn’t expect my students to write in misery either.
Fortunately most writing isn’t academic with its requirement of knowledge creation and novelty. Most writing is communicative, with thought/argument development thrown in.
@mathyone wrote:
My D got C+ on her first formal essay in her English course. But she quickly learned how to organize her thought and write it. Her grammar and vocabulary wasn’t a problem due to her extensive reading. It wasn’t too hard to learn the MLA rules. By the end of semester, she was getting A’s on new essays as well as rewrite of the first C+ essay.
She wrote about her interests - animal welfare, racial conflict and other social issues - and was engaged. Revising multiple drafts was difficult, but still enjoyable and certainly not pain and misery.
However, if she were required to write those essays before her brain could form coherent ideas with enough matured executive functions at age 13, it could have been pain and misery. I heard about it. And I believe that I experienced it when she was age 12, at that time I though she was ready, but she was not, and she dropped the history course. She seemed to be “almost” ready though. So we tried again in the next semester and it worked.
Sorry, I was talking about her college application essays, which I guess would fall under the categories of personal narrative/creative nonfiction. So far she has done well on her college writing, but because she is a STEM major and for other reasons as well, there’s been very little of it, and it remains to be seen how she will do on a major writing project. Both of us feel she wasn’t prepared for either the application essays or a major college paper.
Well, my theory on writing is, although was agreed with many friends, just a speculation. At best it’s only a part of the whole picture. You say that she has done well on her college writing, however little it is, then I am sure she will be prepared for the next level when she needs it.
A quote about writing that I love: “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” (Gene Fowler–journalist, dramatist, and author)
Most smart kids can learn the mechanics of writing (grammar, punctuation, etc). What’s harder is to write interesting prose–to tell a story that captures a reader’s interest. John Macphee is a perfect example of a writer who can make almost any topic interesting.
This started out about a middle school kid becoming a decent writer, not Ph.D. dissertations, Nobel Prizes, endless revisions, etc. Let’s keep it on point. If a discussion about academic and professional writing is of interest, please start a new thread about that.
“So she was saying the artist must suffer in order to create great art?” - One must obtain a certain level of skills thru PRACTICING in order to become an ordinary artist. I do not know what is involved in developing of the genius artist, but I am 100% sure that nobody can pick a brush and start creating a great art all of a sudden. And as a big surprise, looking at great art, even spending hours staring at the phenomenal pieces of art, still will not enable one to create some ordinary piece, let alone a great one. Got to practice music, art, writing to become a musician, artist, writer. Forget about the “great”. We simply talking about ordinary people with the ordinary level of any creations. If a 12 y o kid wants to write at the 12 y o level, the kid had to be practicing for the prior years of his schooling. This is the only point I am making. Reading at the higher level and spending well beyond average time on reading, unfortunately is NOT enough. But kids who tend to write more just “because”, for no reason, most likely will be better writers than others.
^^^Miami–the point was that writing is difficult for most people. I don’t disagree with you on practice–you have to keep writing and re-writing and writing some more to get comfortable with it and gain some level of proficiency. That being said, you also need feedback. It makes no sense to keep writing garbage over and over or to keep using the language incorrectly.
Kids should learn grammar, which is often not part of the school curriculum. (Whatever happened to diagramming sentences?) How you use language reveals a great deal about you. I am always surprised when I hear really smart kids who go to top-notch schools using the language incorrectly. That being said, just knowing grammar isn’t going to make you a great writer.