Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass
A post by Tony Grooms
Readers who follow my columns may recall that I recommend Alain De Botton’s The Art of Travel, a book that has little to do with how to write and everything to do with developing the observational skills and imagination that good writing requires. Recently, while rummaging my neighborhood’s many Little Libraries, which stand like oversized bird houses on every other street, I found a copy of Harold Gatty’s Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass. It’s a wonderful title that seems to me to strike up a metaphor about life and writing, but the title is just what the book is about, pathfinding on land, sea or in the air without the aid of map or compass.
Gatty (1903-57), an Australian navigator, asserts that “all a pathfinder needs is his senses and knowledge of how to interpret nature’s signs.” De Button offers many exercises that emphasize seeing things anew, for example, touring a familiar space like your own bedroom as if it is a foreign place. Gatty’s approach emphasizes the practical, seeing and understanding what is right in front of you. He introduces a picture analysis exercise in which a viewer determines the season, the time of day, the cardinal directions and even the locale by observing the clues that the landscape in a photograph offers up. Where do the shadows fall? What is the flora? What style is the architecture? And so on. At times he gets a bit into the weeds, noting for example, that “the southern branches of trees tend to be more horizontal because they secure full sunlight, whereas the northern branches tend to be more vertical as they reach to obtain more light.” Who knew?
With explanations and exercises, Gatty teaches the reader how to practice being observant—how to engage the five senses—how to find and analyze the details of the world around him. As writers, we may never have a need to bushwack across the Appalachians, but we do need to have the keenest powers of observation of nature and of people. Such details are the molecules that are the catalysts of good writing. Many writers live in their own minds, never seeing what’s around them. That’s their prerogative. They speak of “world building,” but of course, the world is already built—observing and understanding it is critical for its imagined reconstruction on the page—even if that reconstruction is in a wholly unearth-like setting. Gatty’s books are out of print, but lacking the serendipity of finding one in your Little Library, an internet search will easily point you to several copies.
Three of my favorite adages about writing come from Chekov, Hemingway and Gardner. The first says, “Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass;” the second “Show the readers everything, tell them nothing;” and the third, “Moment by moment authenticating detail is the mainstay not only of realistic fiction but of all fiction.” How can the writer know what to show without having first observed?
I want to riff a bit on the idea of finding a way without map or compass. I am a graduate of a writing program, and a strong defender of such programs. They are beneficial to writers who are beginning their trek because they provide guidance—mentorship, community, professional connections, and much practice. The earliest programs go back to the turn of the last century, but their numbers exploded about 1980 as creative writing became a popular subject, usually taught as a workshop seminar in English departments. But even within English Departments, the efficacy of teaching creative writing as an academic subject was suspect. Among the criticisms was that teaching writing tended to create a “workshop” voice, a sameness of expression among the student writers. Having taught creative writing for nearly forty years, I find little evidence for this criticism. The other criticism, typically posed as a “good ole days” hypothetical, is that great writers existed before there were creative writing programs and they learned from no one. Great writers, this way of thinking goes, were gifted with talent and discipline and found literary success in some singular way.
In fact, many writers are self-taught, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have guidance. No writer who has bushwhacked in the Appalachians, though she may have had no guide, has done it without map or compass. The best maps and compasses are careful reading and disciplined practice. Even writers who are guided through programs need these tools. Setting out as an autodidact can be confusing as the writer wanders, perhaps aimlessly, through techniques and theories. A frequent mistake is that she reads instructional books to the exclusion of literature. Such a writer might learn a lot about writing, but might not understand how artful writers transform rules into words and even more importantly, how they break the rules. Instructional texts are important, but the literary works are doubly so. The writer must find those voices that speak to her and delve into them.
Novelist Larry Brown (1951-2004) is sometimes held up as an example of the autodidact. At the age when many writers were matriculating in MFA programs, Brown was a Marine and then a firefighter. He was also an avid reader, finding models in other Southern white male writers like Barry Hannah (1942-2010), Harry Crews (1935-2012), and William Faulkner (1897-1962) with whom he shared a hometown. Brown was also an avid practitioner, staying up late while other firefighters slept so he could draft stories and poems. Famously, he wrote 100 short stories and three novels as practice. Note that even as a solitary bushwhacker, Brown found a compass in his models and a writer friend in Hannah, who was also a professor of creative writing at the University of Mississippi.
Faulkner, too, seems a solitary trailblazer—and yet he had maps and compasses. His first map was his great grandfather, William Clark Faulkner (1825-89), who was a raconteur and novelist. Other guidance came from attorney Phil Stone (1893-1967) who mentored Faulkner as a teen, and famously from novelist Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941). Anderson also mentored Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). Brown, who at one point did take a creative writing class, not only had models and mentors, but was also a part of a multi-generational community of mentors.
As life has taught me, there is likely an exception to every generalization, but I imagine no writer is truly finding his/her/their way without map, compass, or guide. For the autodidact, finding a good map is often difficult. An advantage of the writing program is that it comes with guides, both instructors and classmates, who can help the writer navigate by suggesting maps and compasses.
When writers ask me if they should enroll in a writing program, I tend to say yes, given my biases. Potential students, though, should be careful to find programs that have mentors willing to give of their time and who appreciate the student’s vision. And to beat a metaphor to a pulp, the instructor as guide should not just show the writer the worn trail, but give the writer the tools to blaze his/her/their own.