Every spring, the Indiana Writers Center
has a booth at the Broad Ripple Art Fair, which is held on the grounds of the
Indianapolis Art Center. I love getting there to set up on the morning of the
first day, peppy music on the sound system, volunteers and staff zipping around
on golf carts, artists rolling back the front of their tents to reveal their
wares.

This year there was the smell of rain
from the night before and the smell of lilacs from the huge bushes behind our
booth. The smell of steak and onions and mushrooms sizzling on the grill wafted
over from the nearby steak tent and coffee, from the Hubbard and Cravens booth
next to it.

Closer to opening time, there was the
“Hey! Hey! HEY!” of sound checks. Artists roam around, checking out each others’
booths, chatting, sometimes taking notes. Volunteers go booth-to-booth,
bringing cold bottled water, checking to see if everything’s okay.

When the gates open, a steady stream of
people begins—eventually making its way to our booth in the east parking lot.
Most give us a glance and walk on by. Sometimes people hesitate and we call
out, “Are you interested in writing?” Some laugh and move on. Some politely
say, “No, thank you.” Some instinctively raise their hands, palms out, as if to
fend off the specter of their high school English teacher—and can’t get away
fast enough. Which always makes us laugh.

The fun part is when people say, “Yes.”

 Sometimes they’re young people,
beginning life in the “real” world and finding it difficult, if not impossible,
to write as they did in high school or college. Some are middle-aged, with a
secret dream of writing, but clueless about how to start. Some are older and
want to leave a legacy of memories to their families.

 Some say, “You can make me a writer?”

 And we say, “If you let go of the idea
that it’s going to perfect the first time and are willing to rethink and revise
as many times as it takes to get a finished, polished piece of writing, yes, we
can.

 Occasionally, though, a person like this
girl, a recent graduate of a prestigious private school, comes by:

 Me: Hi, are you interested in writing?

 Girl: I am a writer. I’ve been published
twice.

 Me: Cool!

 I tell her about the Writers Center. Our
classes, our very excellent faculty, our Gathering of Writers.

 Girl: I don’t believe you can teach
creative writing.

 Me: Well, I have to disagree with you
there. I’ve been doing it for about forty years now,

and I guarantee that a good creative
writing teacher can help people become better writers.

 Girl: I don’t think anyone should tell a
writer there’s something wrong with their writing.

 Me: But that’s not what teaching
creative writing is about at all. Writing is a craft and you need to learn it,
just like painters. Have you heard of the painter, Paul Klee.

 Girl: No.

 Me: Picasso then. The sketchbooks from
when he was young are full of beautifully drafted drawings. He learned the
“rules,” then broke them. But his understanding of the craft of writing
underpinned the great paintings he went on to make.

 I explain my nifty idea about how what
you know in your head, feel in your heart and see in your mind’s eye are not
words, that you literally have to translate these things into words—which is
hard enough, but then you can’t read what you’ve written and get a fix on
what’s actually there because you can’t separate the words on the page from the
ideas in your head. Thus, the creative writing teacher (or any good reader) is
necessary to help you see what’s on the page and what’s still in your head.

 Girl: Hostile stare.

 Me: So. Where are you going to college
in the fall?

 Girl: Purdue.

 Me: Wow! Lucky you. They have a fabulous
creative program there.

 Girl: (Sets down the brochure and
schedule of classes I’d given her, steam practically coming out of her ears.) I said, I don’t believe in telling people how to write.

 And walks away.

 All right, then, I thought. Good luck
with that writing career.

 And remembered, as I often do, this
sustaining quote from Richard Bausch:

 “Every book written anywhere is written
a little at a time, over time, in a lot of confusion and doubt. The doubt is
your talent. People with no talent usually don’t have any doubt.” 

 The aspiring writers for whom this rings
true are the ones we love to work with, the ones who benefit from what the IWC
has to offer. If you’re one of them, check out what we have to offer!