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Writing is a craft before it is an art; writing may appear magic, but it is our responsibility to take our students backstage to watch the pigeons being tucked up the magician's sleeve.
-Donald M. Murray, A Writer Teaches Writing
We know the clichés all too well: "Ah, that performance was seamless." "Whoa, his pitching is so smooth." "Oh, she skates effortlessly." "Facile." "Easy." When we respond this way to our finest papers, we inadvertently trick students into thinking that good-to-read writing comes naturally and quickly. These metaphors imply no work; they suggest little preparation. They ignore the processes we want to teach. The concept of flawlessness masks the rigors of craft. In his poem "What Teachers Make," Taylor Mali considers our salaries and social status with acerbic wit but then reflects tenderly on the tough, ironic tasks of the classroom. I love this line: "I make them show all their work in math. And hide it on their final drafts in English" (29; italics added).
Hide the work? Keep it secret? Trick them? Invite them backstage, as Donald M. Murray writes in his often-quoted line, to watch the magician's pigeons. Not a new idea. Baldesar Castiglione's 1526 Book of the Courtier was a book of etiquette, of political correctness: "I have found a quite universal rule . . . to practice in all things a certain sprezzatura [nonchalance], so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought" (32).
So, there's a history here. Sixteenth-century standards for an ideal courtier were high stakes indeed for athletics, rhetoric, music, dancing, and what we might now call "arms management." A successful, high-achieving courtier had to meet all of those standards, but meet them with "sprezzatura," as if he weren't doing them at all.
In short, creating magic isn't magic at all. It takes effort to demonstrate effortlessness. To achieve art, you master craft-you work hard, think creatively, and someone teaches you strategies for doing it. I find the disciplines, genres, and varieties of nonfiction-writing and reading your own or someone else's reality, and conducting the related research-are good places for students to think about and practice both the rigors of craft and the...