What Do Writers Do?

Character chart from CBS interview of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Anthony Doerr

What was the last thing you wrote? A Facebook post? A business proposal? A parent letter, or an email to your child’s teacher? We’re all writers. Some of us more nervous and reluctant than others, but it’s hard to escape the necessity in the adult world. 

Teaching involves inducting students into an identity in the discipline. As an English teacher, that means I help students see themselves as readers and writers. When that happens, the world is full of models and mentors long after their last essay is graded, and maybe they won’t be as nervous and reluctant as some adults I’ve talked to.

What, then, do writers do? I love it when I come across interviews with published writers, and they talk about the very things we do in class—not because we’re students, but because we’re writers. 

I found one of those interviews last week. A friend sent me the link to an interview on CBS with Anthony Doerr, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel All the Light We Cannot See, whose next book, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was just published. There were 3 clips especially that I could not wait to share with 4th and 5th graders the very next day.  

First, I showed Doerr sharing some of his editor’s notes (2:43):

Doerr: [Flipping through a thick sheaf of typewritten paper, rubber banded together, sprouting thickets of post-it notes from every edge.]  This is actually my editor’s questions as she goes through the novel. [Finally stopping on one page he reads...] “This needs a bit of a trim,” she writes. [Laughter.]

The previous day I had just given students feedback on a pre-assessment for setting goals for their next draft. I had told them, “Authors are always working to improve their work. Even professional authors are looking for ways to become better writers. The best way to become a better writer is to ask for feedback. You can look at the feedback, or suggestions, from someone else and use their advice to improve your work. Writers don’t get upset about the feedback. It does not mean they are a bad writer. The feedback is good because it helps them become an even better writer.”* They were skeptical. Their expressions when they saw Doerr embracing his editor’s feedback were priceless!

Next, I showed Doerr’s intricately hand-sketched character chart (3:20). Some of my students found sketching helped them come up with good ideas for their fiction narratives last term. Who knew this was a thing that published writers do!

Doerr: I’ve got a hundred and five characters with names in the novel. As you can see, Zeno  intersecting with Seymour and Anna…

Voice over: So many that he drew this diagram to help visualize his literary labyrinth.

Doerr: I tried, just for my own mind, to braid all their intersections together.

Finally, I showed them Doerr speaking of the difficulty of writing and of his desire to improve (4:13). This resonated so deeply with my experience of writing.

Doerr: I don’t think of myself as all that good yet. I’d like to think I’m getting better at my work.

Interviewer: Come on, you really don’t. You’ve got to think you’re pretty good.

Doerr: No, I genuinely don’t. Language is just this system all the time of failing…You’re almost expressing what you want to express, but you can’t quite get there, and so writing itself has this humility built into it, almost, for me.”

At the end one student asked, “Are any of us going to be writers?”

Clearly, I have failed at communicating this to all my students—some of them may publish books, but all of them will be writers, ARE writers right now. Showing these 3 clips gave me another chance to help them understand that, and to understand that as writers, we seek feedback to make us better, drawing is a perfectly respectable planning tool, and even great writers know they can improve.

How do you help your students understand what writers do?

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*Quote from "Lesson 9: Setting Goals" in Jamie Sears’ Not So Wimpy Teacher, 4th grade personal narrative writing curriculum)