Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Late Bloomers

Late Bloomers

I definitely think I will use these blogs to write the lectures to go along with the lessons. I guess the question is how many are enough…. Before the student gets bored and throws up their hands and quits reading.? Then there is the reality that a little bit of Percy Goodfellow goes a long way. Everybody in a class sees the process from a different slant and takes away different things from the experience.

For an instructor it is a never ending rollercoaster ride of highs and lows, watching some writers grow and others who drift away and follow a different path. Not that a path other than the one I advocate is a bad thing but sometimes writers are headstrong and insist on following their own light and who am I to say my approach is better than theirs. When I think of all the great writers who have succeeded despite the advice of their critics I am humbled. I have never felt that all wisdom resides in this mind and I wish everyone the best even if I don’t always agree with the paths they choose. One would think that if someone is taking a course they would listen to the instructor and try their model before embarking on a tangent but writers are often independent, stubborn and insist like Frank Sinatra, in doing it, “My Way.”

The first question I always have for myself in trying to understand a student is where they are coming from. Do they come from a solid academic background in high school and perhaps even college or graduate school or have they never gotten a real opportunity to absorb and let the English language take root? For those who english is a second language the challenge is enormous to write at the publication level. If the student is seriously deficient in the basic skills I have a different set of expectations. I want to help them make their play the best it can be. I try and limit the tough love and this is different from how I approach a talented and well educated student. The way you determine this is go to their port and read samples of their writing.

The second category are the educated and talented students. These tend to fall into those inclined to the science of writing and those with more of an artistic propensity. Those into the science do well at first and no doubt they got good grades in school and are used to having their class work receive high marks and laudatory comments. The Artists often struggled in school and since most academic institutions find it easier to measure science than art tend to reward those with the science skills. However, science can be learned and art is a gift from God. There are some students that have both and these are the ones that like the cream rise to the top. An artist who is not technically adept can acquire those skills but at the expense of hard work and pain. However, the technicians will ultimately only rise to the level their artistic talents allow and therein is the real difference between the two. The artist is used to struggle and the technician is used to praise and will never understand why their work never quite makes the cut.

This is why many of those who excel in an academic setting fail to rise to the next level in the competitions of life. They usually gravitate to academia or middle management and never really make it to the big time. I believe that most “Late Bloomers” arrive once the technical understanding finally sinks in, takes root and the artistic talent can then piggy back on top of it.