Craftsmanship is the how of writing. It is the part of writing that can be practiced and learned. The writer is artist, true. He or she possesses the artistic impulse. But the writer must also be a craftsman. She must know how to measure the wood and how to cut it and where it can be nailed and how to make a house or a cabinet by following rules that will provide for the cabinet to open and the house to stay up. I like talking about craftsmanship because it tends to deflate our highfalutin notions of what writing is all about. The less highfalutin your notions about writing and about yourself the more and the better you will write. Think of yourself, if you must think of yourself at all, as a person learning a trade. If you are starting out, you are an apprentice. If you have been doing it for a while, you are an experienced craftsman who must challenge herself with every task and still learning. But here is the key point I want to make. In the eyes of God, I don’t think that being a writer is any more special, any better than being a carpenter. In the eyes of God, writing a book and building a table are equally good. What counts is the care and the love and patience that went into the making. What counts is the talents that are expressed in the creation. It’s good now and then to try to see the way God would see.
I am not a good carpenter. When I was in first grade in Mexico, I was so bad when it came to doing crafts, that the teacher would let me tell the class stories whenever the class worked on a project I would sit on a stool in the front of the class and make up a story on-the-go as the class made wooden clowns that you could roll on the ground with a long wooden stick. I’m not sure any of my classmates were envious of me up there, but I was envious of them. Now I think that my classmates and I were just using a different medium. Be a carpenter of words.
