🚀 go-pugleaf

In a previous article, bf23+@andrew.cmu.edu (Brian Frumolt) says:

>Alan Barclay writes:
>
>"Some excellent writers seem to have an implicit understanding of what
>makes good writing, but are unable to isolate what it is they know, nor
>to make it clear to others.  This sort of knowledge seems magical to me.
>I myself must understand a technique or concept well enough to teach it,
>before I can actually use it well.  I find the difference fascinating."
>
>This is the difference, I think, between the writing being a skill, and
>the writing being an art.  To have a skill and not understand what makes
>you able to write, or even why your writing is good, does not make you
>nearly as talented as if you not only know how to write, but know WHY
>you know how to write, and are able to teach those principles to others.
>
>Being able to set down a heuristic, and explain what is going on when
>you do what you do best, is a sign of truly understanding what it is
>that you are doing.


Hey, wait a minute, Brian!  I will agree that the ability to understand
what you are doing as you write, and to explain it to others, is a talent. 
Therefore, a person who has that as well as the ability to write, has two
talents instead of one.  In that sense, the person who can only do it, but
not explain it, might possibly be said to be not "nearly as talented."

On the other hand, what if the do-but-not-explain person plays the bassoon,
too?  Then they'd be even--two talents to two talents.

That's not really so far-fetched.  I don't see any evidence that the person
who can explain what s/he is doing is necessarily better at it than the
person who can't.  There are a lot of people who can explain what a writer
is doing, who couldn't do it themselves.  It's a separate ability, like
gardening or cooking.  You can be very good at explaining, and still not
able to get a line down that doesn't sound muffled and cottony.  Or you can
write prose like an arrow, and not really know why. 

Bonita Kale