I keep wanting to write about writing. But then I think about Bob…
My favorite job ever was tutoring English and philosophy in college. People would come into the tutoring center, and we could have long fascinating conversations about how they think, how to make something click for them, how to say it so their teacher likes it, how to get a good grade.
Most people came in once or twice, but some people came in repeatedly. One of my most regular students was an older gentleman named… we’ll call him Bob.
Bob’s dream was to know all about writing. But he kept failing English 101. Taking it over and over. He was on his second or third round when I first met him.
At first I treated him like a normal student. We went through the assignments, the mechanics of writing the essays. He seemed to get it, and then he would fail.
Finally I started asking, “What do you really want out of this? Why do you keep taking this? What is your goal here?”
He said, “I want to … really know about writing. If someone says, ‘Hey Bob, what’s a thesis statement?’ I want to tell’em! If someone wants to know, ‘Hey, where do you put this comma?’… I want to tell’em!”
Unfortunately, Bob ONLY wanted to write about writing.
He couldn’t see the point in writing about whales, or politics, or sandwiches, or the history of bicycles. ONLY writing.
So he couldn’t learn HOW to write. He couldn’t learn how to craft a thesis statement – because he was only interested in writing a thesis statement about thesis statements, which he hadn’t learned first. He couldn’t learn where to put commas, cause he only wanted to write sentences about where to put commas.
I think, too often, we are trying to be Bob.
We end up all bridge, with nothing to carry across.
Hazards of Overly-Linear Growth
The problem here is that humans are too linear about growth for our own good. Bob kept failing because he would only walk directly towards his goal. He wouldn’t meander in the woods, he wouldn’t collect ideas to build his goal with. Only straight ahead.
I think about him often, and our hour-long conversations in which I would try to convince him not to just write about writing. Because I have the same idiocy too, just in different areas.
I think about him when I want to write about meaning, itself as a way of finding meaning. I think about him when I consider writing about building my business while I’m building a business.
I see it in coaches that teach you how to coach, in products that teach you to make products, in “how to Substack” blogs on Substack.
It’s what happens when you move so directly towards a goal that you don’t have any context, any content, to make it meaningful.
It’s like those decorative Christmas presents at stores – if your kid unwraps them, we discover they sure looked pretty on the outside, but they’re empty inside.
It’s what happens when the creator is creating so directly towards a goal that their navel-gazing becomes Ouroboros – the self-eating snake.
Cliffs You Can’t Get Down: Fragile Learning
I think of this as “fragile learning”.
The thing is, you can learn coaching, or writing, or how to Substack THROUGH making a self-referential program. It’s not impossible.
But the problem is that you end up walking on this narrow cliff of advice. It’s like being dropped on top of a mountain without the skills to get up or down on your own.
I once climbed a ridge with a guy who seemed very confident in his ability to go up, but it turned out, didn’t know how to get down. I didn’t either – I had trusted him to know.
I’ll always remember the feeling of looking at this beautiful scenery, and then looking down at the sharp fall below, and thinking it would be a lot prettier if I knew how to get up and down on my own, rather than trusting the idiot who got me there.
Success Requires Sovereignty and Side Quests
Sovereignty over your process – or robust learning – comes from the side quests and oblique learning that build the skills to get you up and down the mountain on your own.
Even if they don’t seem directly related to the goal at first, side quests let you answer questions like, “What happens if I go over there?”
They let you discover new, useful, and more meaningful ways of getting things done.
They also teach you how to fall and get back up, how to bandage wounds, how to push through discomfort.
The oblique paths teach the hidden background skills that make you good at something.
From experience – I find the walks and wonderings of our lives are also what make it meaningful.
I Don’t Want to Lose the Meaning
I work as an editor. I write a lot.
I have a lot of ideas about how we could write better, clearer, refocus the lens so buried crystals of meaning can surface.
But the hitch is that… I don’t want to lose the meaning.
The side quests, the wandering in the woods, the mini mountains, the failures… All those things are what create the context, depth, and richness that keep “writing about writing” from turning into a self-eating snake.
Ultimately, the problem was never writing about writing. It was forgetting to put something else in the box too.
On another level, this is also why you have to write bad sh*t that you don’t care about – a lot of it. That’s the time that you spend wandering around in the woods, tripping over roots, slipping on scree, learning about snails and whales and mushrooms. That is the learning time that makes you a better writer later.
You don’t have to publish. But that’s what teaches you to get down the mountain when you need it.
Pivot Warning: Bridges and Mining Ahead
So I guess the point is that I’m going to try to bring the craft of writing and editing into things here, because that is ultimately how we convey meaning to each other. That is the bridge we have to get our discovered crystals of meaning across.
But the difficulty is that we so often focus on building the bridge that we forget to go mining for things worth carrying over it. We forget the side quests that help us find meaning.
We build the output machine, but we forget the intake valve.
Good writing needs both. Something worth saying, and good craft saying it.
You don’t always work on them at the same time. Indeed, they’re separate muscles.
But you need them both on the page.
So I’ll be talking about mining for meaning – seeking it out, giving it space, recognizing it, processing it into usable form…
But also bridge construction – the craft of writing and editing, so that you can carry that meaning across to someone else who needs it.
Happy bridge-building and meaning-questing,
Morgan
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