Good writing—even genius—can be taught. This beautiful truism is the essence of the incredible, simple wisdom of Dorothea Brande (January 12, 1893 - December 17, 1948), a creative writing teacher in the 1920s and '30s. Her 1934 book, Becoming a Writer was one of the first writing handbooks that believed writing was an issue of character, not just talent.

Perhaps it is true that self-delusion most often takes the form of a belief that one can write; as to that, I cannot say. My own experience has been that there is no field where one who is in earnest about learning to do good work can make such enormous strides in so short a time. So I am going to write this book for those who are fully in earnest.

Like contemporary choreographer Twyla Tharp, who believed that focused self-awareness and disciplined routine could mobilize a creative habit in anyone, Brande put immense confidence in discipline and the ease of schedule.

Decide for yourself when you will take that time for writing; for you are going to write in it. If your work falls off, let us say, after three-thirty in the afternoon, the fifteen minutes from four o'clock until quarter past four can safely be drafted as time of your own.

Well, then, at four o'clock, you are going to write, come what may, and you are going to continue until the quarter-hour sounds. When you have made up your mind, you are free to do whatever you like or must do.

Now this is very important and can hardly be emphasized too strongly: you have decided to write at four o'clock, and at four o'clock, write you must! No excuses can be given.

Brande also, somewhat realistically, advised that while genius might be taught, you must "be in earnest" for it to take root. Echoing Dani Shapiro's counsel that writing never gets any easier, and if you can't sit and do it, perhaps writing isn't for you.

Virginia Woolf's writing desk. Duke University Libraries.

Before Brande waves her hand at noncommittal fidgety sorts, she describes ways we fail in our attempts at writing. For example, the "One-Book Author":

There is the writer who has had early success but is unable to repeat it. Here again, there is a can't explanation which is offered whenever this difficulty is met: this type of writer, we are assured, is a "one-book author": he has written a fragment of autobiography, has unburdened himself of his animus against his parents and his background, and, being relieved, cannot repeat his tour de force.

Or we might be an "Occasional Writer" who painfully vacillates between richly fertile output and dry spells of tortuous nothings.

There are writers who can, at wearisomely long intervals, write with great effectiveness. I have had a pupil whose output was one excellent short story each year - hardly enough to satisfy either body or spirit. the sterile periods were torture to her; the world, till she could write again, was a desert waste. Each time she found herself unable to work, she was certain she could never repeat her success, and on, my first acquaintance, she very nearly persuaded me of it.

This initial empathy for the writer, this awareness from the author of what we (the reader and hopeful writer) might feel, is exceptional and, in 1934, unheard of.

This edition's introduction by John Gardner   John Gardner (1933 – 1982), an equally prominent and meaningful American writing teacher in the 1960s and '70s, wrote "On Becoming a Novelist," which I will add to the Library in due course. He taught and mentored Raymond Carver and Toni Morrison and was a staunch supporter of non-attention-seeking fiction, that which was free of cheap thrills. His positions earned him fame and enemies. A good piece on his divisive legacy here. contextualizes Brande's premise: "She is right that genius can be taught (once the secret emptiness of that phrase is understood) because genius is as common as old shoes. Everybody has it, some more than others, perhaps; but that hardly matters since no one can hope to use up more than a tiny portion of his or her native gift. Every nightmare hints at the secret reserves of imaginative power in the human mind."

"Shift and Stack," 2019 by ceramicist Anne Butler.

As Brande said, writing is one of those bizarre professions in which you must cultivate a writer's temperament. John Cleese, a brilliant comedic writer, recognized that in writing, you could sit entirely still and do nothing and yet still be working. Existing in that emptiness is not for everyone; Cleese always had a writing partner.

John Steinbeck had a complex relationship with solitude; his letters and journals bear this out. What Brande crystalizes, however, is solitude itself is useless. We need the freedom to dive deep into a buried unconscious, almost a dream state. While solitude enables this plunge, it doesn't guarantee it.

Working desk of Roald Dahl, Great Missenden, UK. Learn more. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

I like to read Brande with a side of Richard Hugo, a 20th-century American poet whose writing on the psychogenic nature of poetry and the need to "home" our creative impulse is rich and down to earth.

Then there's that banal, tiresome question: can writing be taught? Yes, it can, and no, it can't. A good teacher can save a young poet years by simply telling him things he need not waste time on, like trying to will originality or trying to share an experience in language, or trying to remain true to the facts. Ultimately the most important things a poet will learn about writing are from himself in the process.
From Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town

Knowledge of emotions and psychology, self-awareness, and environmental insight are woven thoroughly throughout self-improvement and creative enterprise. More wonderful thoughts in this stream include Rollo May's 1975 work Courage to Create and John Steinbeck's thoughts as he wrote his last great novel, East of Eden, and my gathering of what it feels like to be interrupted.