Okay. I think I’ve admitted to you here how I scored a politically-incorrect “moron” rating on my SAT scores, many years ago when they still used that classification for identifying students who didn’t have a shot at experiencing any kind of success in a particular category, in the “Mechanical Reasoning” and “Spatial Relationships” designations of the testing. I remember randomly blackening the answer brackets of the “folded” drawings, my brain absolutely unable to connect the illustrations to any order whatsoever. In my defense I scored in the upper 90 percentiles in anything to do with language skills and reading comprehension—in other words: all things English and literature related. Distinct markers there for the testing succinctly establishing what I could and couldn’t do.
Whatever my English and literature classes held for me in school—including my brief year at the U—I “got”. Could do. Excelled. With As and an occasional B. From sentence diagramming which I thought was fun to writing essays, short stories, and book reports, I was a good student. And I loved it all. Or most of it. It’s especially fun to address your strengths and feel the sense of accomplishment.
Although I learned the structures of sentences, paragraphs, essays, short stories, and novels, those things were better “absorbed” by participating in actually reading and writing them than focusing on their mechanics.
I’m one of those writers who could care less about the “mechanics” of writing novels. Scholarly diagnosis and/or teaching of the craft don’t cut it with me. Not anymore. I’m flexible in my judgment of novels, appreciating diverse styles and voices. I don’t have to—nor do I want to—extrapolate what specific technique worked to accomplish a particular reaction.
This is not a criticism of those who pursue a scholarly approach to novel reading and writing. Whatever works for an individual is the crux of how they were designed. I’m simply sharing what I can and cannot—or do and do not—do in my reading and writing.
A story and the way it’s told either work for me or they don’t. Simple, complex, or a mix of both: if I like it, I do, and of course if I don’t . . . I can tell you why I don’t like a story and even why I don’t like the writing. But when it comes to a book I love, it’s quite simply because I loved the voice, and I got into the story—usually by falling in love with a character or several of them.
If you want mechanical analysis and dissection of writing techniques? You know not to come to me: I’m a moron when it comes to mechanical reasoning—but by choice with literature.
Lord, only you can make something valuable out of these raw materials. Thank you for infusing worth. Apart from you, I can do nothing. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.