In my perfect world, there would be little difference between desire and reality. When I had an idea, for a story or a film for example, I would be able to create that with only a minimum of effort. Then I could go on to the next wonderful idea. If I wanted to learn something, like a language, it would be very easy. All I would have to do is read through the grammar and vocabulary once, understand it intellectually, and then I would be able to speak that language perfectly.
In this perfect world of mine, the system of learning skills might be like in the film, The Matrix, where knowledge is uploaded straight into our brains. In one of my favourite sequences from the film, Neo (Keanu Reeves) has just been undergoing ‘training’. This involves being strapped into a chair, having a cable stuck in the back of his head, and then an operator uploads skills directly into Neo’s brain. After learning Kung Fu in less than a minute, Neo tries out his new found fighting style on Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne). Check it out here.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in my perfect world. Learning most things takes a lot of time and effort. Achieving true mastery of anything is extremely rare, and may take a lifetime. If originality of ideas led to directly to publication or production, I’d by now have a creative C.V. as long as a giraffe’s neck. Instead I have to keep working slowly at my work.
Most pieces I write take quite a long time to go the original idea I had to what you read. I have to think about the best way to construct every sentence – which words to use, what grammatical structure is the most effective. And then there’s the complication of the flow of sentences and ideas in both paragraphs and across the piece as a whole. What you’re reading now is quite different from the first draft I wrote. If I didn’t take care with what I wrote and how I wrote it, people would get bored, stop reading and go and look at something else. That’s definitely not what I want.
A part of my work that I really enjoy is when someone gives me a piece of their writing and asks my opinion on how to make it better. I give this advice freely, but it disappoints me a little when they haven’t even read it themselves before I get it. Just handing over a first draft is not a particularly effective way for anyone to improve their writing skills. Some self-editing will always reveal mistakes or better ways to write something. When I give someone a piece of my writing to look at, and they point out basic mistakes that I should have picked up myself, I feel embarrassed. I want their opinion on the things that I couldn’t have thought of.
Admittedly, self-editing takes a lot more time, and at the end of the day it still might not be perfect. But at least I will have produced something which I’m not totally embarrassed to read again. And along the way, by looking at the way I write, I’ve learned something about my own writing skill. Then hopefully the next time I write something, both the first draft and the final product will be of better quality and quicker to produce.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:53 pm
yes, I will.