on untechnique

Go ahead and read this:

Bret Lott - Against Technique

Then this:

Bret Lott’s essay encourages me to withdraw from this course. Art vs. artifice is a realm I know all too well. I used to teach guitar lessons but I quit. I quit because I reached a threshold. A threshold where you cannot teach a pupil anything else, they just have to go it on their own and look to you for guidance every now and then. I live a very unorthodox life, believe unorthodox beliefs, have an unorthodox approach to guitar technique, and I am now coming to realize that my writing is that. Unorthodox. This is a good thing. In reading Lott’s essay, I felt my denominator shrinking, in real time, becoming increasingly common. I’d much rather aspire to be 1/1,000,000 than 1/1. Either way, both could possibly be viewed as identical.

Writing shouldn't require identifying such trite details (maybe it's not so trite, I'm no expert). But in that aspect, who is really? I'll tell you who is. The reader. Books and stories are a lot like wine; there are many good and bad, but it in the end, it only matters to the person consuming them how he or she chooses to feel about them. Author-itative brilliance is spawned from the mind, whether it be one of those “Eureka!” moments while going for a long distance run, or underestimating your child’s potentialities of good will. The fact is “Eureka!” can’t be taught. There are an infinite number of permutations and combinations of words that one can use to describe how to author good nonfiction. In the end, however, you only need be concerned with how and why you have arrived at the close of an essay, short story, novel, or other what-have-you’s.

I know nothing and I am only trying to walk into the room. Knowing that knowledge is innately attained everyday and knowing there is not a finite amount of knowledge to be attained is a feeling most humble. Fiction and nonfiction techniques coincide exactly when superimposed, but there is no one way to teach one the superimposition of such techniques. There is no end all be all theory of creative writing, fictive or not. For being Against Technique, Lott surely attempts to impose his “technique” on the reader/writer in question looking for an answer, while in the end he tells you to engage your one and only path to the waterfall. There is no correct nor incorrect way of being an author. It is an art form. Like wine. I savor my 2nd glass of Mark West ‘05 Pinot Noir as I write this and think, “Damn. That’s good art.”