Education Quote by Tracy Kidder

The insistence that writing cannot be taught flatters the myth of the solitary genius, but Tracy Kidder, a patient craftsman of narrative nonfiction, calls that myth what it is: nonsense. His own career argues the point. Working for decades with the editor Richard Todd, he built books like The Soul of a New Machine and Mountains Beyond Mountains out of reporting, structure, and revision. That partnership, later distilled into their book Good Prose, shows how writing develops through conversation, example, and correction. Editing is teaching, and it leaves fingerprints on every good page.

What can be taught? Plenty. How to notice the world and take notes that will still make sense a month later. How to shape scenes and summaries so a story breathes. How to choose verbs that move, cut throat-clearing, and place the reader where the action matters. How point of view governs both tone and ethics. How to balance authority with humility, especially in nonfiction, where accuracy and fairness are not optional. Most of all, how to revise: to read your own work as if you did not write it, to hear the clunk in a sentence and the sag in a paragraph, and to keep going until the sound is right.

What cannot be guaranteed is the hunger that powers all of this. Curiosity, stamina, and a capacity for doubt are not formulas a teacher can hand over. But they can be summoned and strengthened by practice, by reading models closely, by the steady pressure of an honest editor. Kidder rejects the romantic excuse that leaves writers stranded with their supposed gifts. He argues for writing as a craft, learned in the doing. The first draft may belong to inspiration, but the pages readers remember come from taught habits: attention to detail, respect for the reader, and the discipline to make choices line by line. That is not mysticism. It is work, and it can be taught.