EXTREME CLOSE UP!!!!

In my illustration from the teaching from the summit post, only the instructor has the proper pickax and boots. But only a handful of learners on the mountain have access to the same privileges successful writers tend to have.

Obviously, race, gender, LBGT issues and class are issues that cannot be ignored. And ableism, of course, It’s a privilege still so invisible that I forgot it, despite being a chronic pain sufferer from an extremely well-spent youth getting thrown off of very fast-moving objects. Dopamine. You get it where you find it.

My non-neurotypical ADHD brain with its severe lack of executive function will tell you it was exhausting to not be able to do anything. I carried everything I couldn’t force myself to do like a litany in my head until sheer terror forced me to act.

The executive function lost to unhealed and unresolved trauma in a person’s life can be equally soul-scattering.

Attending a weekend writing conference is only a weekend writing conference for workers who work M-F. If they want to attend during the day on Friday, they need a job they can take off for their publishing dreams. Otherwise, it means requesting two of the busiest days that most businesses have and burning holidays.

Conferences mean having the physical ability to sit and listen to people talking without causing a fuss. It’s having reliable and trustworthy childcare or a spouse willing to tend to the household needs and children for a weekend while the writer is absorbing new information or networking. It means transport to and from the conference centre. Major cons are held in downtown locations of major cities that might have to be travelled to, first. It means having the energy after a full week of work to actively pay attention. It’s being able to afford the time off, if it’s unpaid, or not being stressed over how rent or groceries get paid.

I can only speak from the queer perspective, but it’s being in the middle of having a professional conversation with someone you respect and having their unexamined bias just pop out in front of you. I’ve been told — as the majority opinion by writers I’ve always respected before 2004-5ish — that queer characters should only be queer if it’s a queer story about being queer. But it eventually went from an opinion most straight writers had to opinions half of them did to an opinion only a writer who has never examined an opinion they’ve gripped with their closed mind would have. Everyone else hushes like they’ve just never heard such a thing.

It was amazingly adorable to watch. But I’ve heard worse opinions than that shared as common, accepted ones. Writing groups are not quite a safe place, but it looks like one.

There are far too many unexamined biases held by people in positions of power to assume it could be one soon.

Having the time to put 10,000 hours of dedicated practice into any skill on top of the hours needed to sleep, work, family and social relationships is an incredible privilege. Dedicated practice requires solid concentration. Having the time can’t help if the writer doesn’t have the mental energy to concentrate after a long day.

I’d been practicing Japanese by reading grammar books and copying down word lists for several months before I realized if I wanted to speak Japanese, I had to speak to Japanese people. I still remember the creeping horror of realizing I was going to have to make mistakes to learn from them.

Even the ability to learn a complex system from instruction — just by being told what to do — isn’t a skill found commonly found in adult learners. Some just need a little feedback at the right time. A lot of learners have to be taught — by an instructor who can verify what was learned — before they learn it. Some need the specific steps they would take to accomplish a goal spelled out.

And that doesn’t get into the competency required in the language skills to make thoughts into words into stories. Both literacy-wise and lingua francaly.

Successful writers are the writers who wrote until what they said affected the reader, to paraphrase Edmund Carpenter’s foreword to They Became What they Beheld. They had the ability, the energy, the time, the knowledge and the support to do so.

Not teaching learners the right tools for the job teaches that no tools are needed. Meaningful instruction requires a learner who is in attendance to learn how to do what they can already do better.