I read recently, in the context of an essay on expertise in making sushi, about the three stages of Japanese craftsmanship: learning to follow the rules; understanding when and how to break the rules; commanding expertise that rises above the rules.
I’m always suspicious of European summaries of Japanese thinking. A great deal is lost in translation, and the cultural contexts are so different that even an accurate translation might be hard to recognise. Even so, the idea of these stages felt recognisable to me.
I’ve been writing fiction and teaching creative writing for many years. Sometimes I encounter students who believe they can be writers without reading, or without being serious or enthusiastic readers. This raises many questions for me: why would you want to write if you don’t love to read? How do you imagine you will learn to write better if not by reading other writers’ better writing? Where, exactly, do you think writing comes from?
Some people want to “be writers” without wanting to work on writing. The writers they want to be seem to achieve fame and fortune – neither likely outcomes of a life devoted to literature – fuelled by “inspiration” that descends from the heavens with no effort required. They sometimes claim that reading would pollute this inspiration, exerting unwelcome influence on their pure voices.
Wanting to write without wanting to read is, at best, trying to skip the first stage of an artistic apprenticeship. There are no rules in literature, but there are deep traditions and they are there for deep reasons. Writers need to know their chosen forms, to inhabit them, to test them from the inside, to understand their complexities, structures and weak points. This learning is not a stage to be traversed and left behind, but the roots and wellspring of a maturing writing practice.
As we read seriously, we might notice where writers play with or depart from the traditions that nurture their work. It’s rarely as violent as “breaking” the rules, more like testing, bending, playing with and against the shapes and structures we’ve learnt to respect. Ask why “showing” is better than “telling”. What’s wrong with an omniscient narrator? Is there a reason why the best writers tend to avoid adverbs? Try it, see what happens, but know how to ask the questions first.
And then there comes a phase where experience tells, where everything you’ve written as well as everything you’ve read opens the paths ahead, where – still reading, still experimenting – you know what you’re doing and where you come from. Maybe you don’t need to look back for reassurance as often as you did, maybe what feels like instinct but is hard-won knowledge, supports you in new endeavour. This is not the end of learning but a more exciting beginning, and you still need to read.
I thought, as I read about the sushi, of my own various kinds of making. Not for me to say where I might be in the work of learning to write, but I know that as a dressmaker, for example, I am and will probably remain in the first stage. I can execute a pattern designed by an expert. Following instructions, I can usually make simple, well-finished garments I’m happy to wear. Not everything comes out as hoped. I wouldn’t attempt any serious tailoring and I can’t and don’t much want to draft my own patterns.
[ Rosemary Jenkinson: A 10-step guide to being an Irish writerOpens in new window ]
As a cook, when I’m on the familiar ground of European vegetarian food and especially baking, I could claim the second phase. I read recipes but rarely follow them exactly. I understand the traditions in which I work well enough to know what substitutions I can make to accommodate what I have to hand and the tastes of my household. I rarely try to cook from a cuisine I don’t know, because I won’t be able to tell if my work is any good, and even my experiments are imitative.
I don’t for a moment think we should all try to reach the third stage of everything, or even anything. There’s a lot to be said for what used to be called “good plain cooking” and “good plain sewing” that we might also apply to “good plain writing” or driving or carpentry or any other endeavour. Simple, adequate, fit for purpose: take pride in it.
Real mastery of a craft, true expertise, is another matter, a joyful thing to see in another person and a life’s work to attempt.