I have been consistent in my comparing the likeness of writing to drawing for a few years now. I see no reason to stop now. The saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ often got on my nerves because I cannot draw to save my life. Though it eventually occurred to me that a thousand words could make a painting as well. When we first learn about art. We are given coloring books, with already drawn pictures and those pictures are sometimes labeled in words what colors they are supposed to be. We are given crayons and told to follow instructions.
Later on we are given the pictures with no labels and crayons, and we are told to color in, and we do so already aware that apples are red and sunflowers yellow, and the sky is blue and clouds are white. With the specific instruction to color inside the lines. In later art classes they remove the visible lines, and they tell you to draw apples, sun, sky, clouds. We do so based on the scaffold of rules we learn throughout our previous classes. Our work is then labeled boring, then they introduce us to some guy named Picasso, and he’s doing art stuff that should be considered illegal but isn’t because in some weird way he is still drawing inside the lines, just enough for you to understand what it is you are seeing.
When Shelly Reid talks about the rules we are taught when we are learning to write and how we go from basic instruction like show and not tell, to way more complicated rules like writing a thesis that is precise and interesting is very much like how we are taught to draw, and as someone who still cannot draw very well, and even struggles color in the lines still I am wondering if there is any hope for my writing.
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