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Literary Lights

Priscilla Fagan

All in the Family

“I think the family is the place where the most ridiculous and least respectable things in the world go on.” Ugo Betti Since Betti’s time, the definition of family has changed, although this quote has standing power today. Extended families, thanks to the Internet today, reach all corners of the world. An outstanding example of that is Writers' Village, a family of writers working toward similar goals.
 
I believe you’ll be hard pressed to find a closer family of strangers anywhere on the Internet. Sounds rather contradictory, doesn’t it? But we could pass each other on the street and never know it. We come from different backgrounds; some of us are nurses, some of us teachers, some engineers, others homemakers, yet we all congregate because of that one desire we have to sate. Our desire to write.
 
One of the questions that arises continuously is how can you learn to write if there are no instructors. First and foremost, as Kurt Vonnegut says so eloquently, “You can’t teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.” Second, the reader can see things from fresh eyes that you as the writer cannot. To put it another way, “You must be aware that the reader is at least as bright as you are.” William Maxwell tells it like it is. We are all readers with the added benefit of honing our writing skills. What better way to learn than from our peers?
 
Robert Graves and Alan Hodge suggest . . . “that whenever anyone sits down to write he should imagine a crowd of his prospective readers (rather than a grammarian in cap and gown) looking over his shoulder. They will be asking such questions as: ‘What does this sentence mean?’ ‘Why do you trouble to tell me that again?’ ‘Why have you chosen such a ridiculous metaphor?’ ‘Must I really read this long, limping sentence?’ ‘Haven’t you got your ideas muddled here?’ . . .” Sound familiar? The answer is yes, but probably in a gentler way at the Writers' Village because many of your peers have been there and done that.
 
It’s all in the family, and as with all families, we laugh, argue, agree, and disagree and often participate in some ridiculous conversations. In the end we continue to write. I’m going to leave you with a gem from Longfellow, and a reminder that we don’t know who is on the other side of our computers. “A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years’ mere study of books.”