Learning How To Learn How To Write, by Paul Shirley

My “public” email address has been posted for several years. It appeared at the end of my original ESPN columns, it is on the jacket of my book, and it lurks somewhere on this website.

One of the more entertaining aspects of having this email address is that accessing it brings with it the anticipation of the unknown. I might get an email from someone who’s read my book and loves it, I might get a note from someone who thinks the world would be better off if my family died in a bus crash, or I might get nothing at all.

Last June, I opened an email from a man asking me if I was interested in teaching an online class. He wrote that he was the CEO of a new company that specialized in online coursework and that he had a background working with startups; he’d been at eBay in the glory days, he said. I was intrigued and suspicious. Was this man my Magwitch? Or was this another one of those ideas – like the Giant Conveyor Belt Transportation System that I sketched out in third grade – that seems great when floated but then never comes to fruition?

The truth was somewhere in between. John Levisay hasn’t granted me a monthly allowance. (Yet.) But his company was real, and so was his interest.

We discussed a few ideas and finally hit on one we thought might work: I would teach writing. But I wouldn’t teach it like a normal teacher teaches writing. I would talk about my experiences, and I would make it clear that I do not consider myself an expert in writing. Instead, I would tout my expertise in learning how to write, emphasizing the fact that I’ve done that learning on my own.

I spent one of last summer’s months holed up in my Kansas City home, crafting eleven lectures about writing: what I’d learned, how I’d learned it, and how I thought a student could learn from me. To give my theoretical students a break from my rich baritone voice (wink), I consulted as many interesting people as I could. I recorded interviews about the rhythm of writing with Riley Breckenridge from Thrice and Amanda Tannen from Stellastarr*. I talked about failure with basketball minds: my agent, Tim Floyd, and Ron Adams, who is an assistant coach for the Chicago Bulls. I talked to Phil Hay, who wrote the screenplays for Crazy/Beautiful and Clash Of The Titans, about the way he writes. I asked Chuck Klosterman, and Neal Pollack and the novelist Ibi Kaslik about the lessons they’ve learned.

And I talked. A lot. Thanks to a miniature book tour, countless interviews about basketball and writing, and a fair number of other assorted speaking engagements, I’ve done some public speaking in my day. But this was different. It was just me and a camera. (And a director and a cameraman. And an editor. And John Levisay, whenever he came by to see if this basketball player knew anything about what he was saying.) But mostly, it was just me. No audience, no strange girl in the back row who I think might be cute. Just the cold, unblinking, detached, antiseptic, clinical, dispassionate (Stop staring at me goddammit!) camera.

The result was eleven thirty-minute lectures about writing, called Writing: An Outsider’s Guide. (The title my girlfriend and I floated, which was No Corduroy Jacket Required: An Outsider’s Guide To Writing, was rejected, it seems. Apparently Mr. Levisay is not the Phil Collins fan I assumed him to be.)

For a taste, here’s the preview:

I think the class turned out quite well. It passes the gag test: I don’t feel the overwhelming urge to throw up when I watch myself. (Sometimes, that’s an issue.) And I think Sympoz has hit on some good ideas: Students of my class can ask me questions by creating discussions as they watch lectures, and they can set up writing communities by interacting with their fellow Paul-watchers.

I won’t try to sell you, dear reader, on buying my class. Not too hard, anyway. I will mention that Writing: An Outsider’s Guide only costs $19. And that, if you ask me, the interview with Riley Breckenridge is worth at least nineteen bucks.

Whether you spend $19 or not, I won’t get rich from teaching a class for Sympoz.com. But I’m glad that John emailed me. Because he did, I got to spend a month studying, analyzing, and thinking about writing. As a result, I am a better writer. And, I think, a better teacher.

But I’ll let you be the judge of that, when you take my class.

(If that last line didn’t fail your gag test, consider clicking on the Sympoz logo below, and enter the magical world of online learning.)

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