What is the biggest thing you've had to UNLEARN as an artist to grow in your craft?

[JayJams78]

I am posting this thread on both this board and the Author's Hangout because I believe it is so important.

I have spent years laboring to hone my craft as a poet, a story writer, a musician, and a lyricist. The thing that has most amazed me is how much of that wasn't learning something new, but unlearning and uncluttering to get at things I've known instinctively since I was a child. Yes, I'm still talking writing here, though life principles often tend to apply.
So what I'd like to hear, and have others hear, is what the biggest UNLEARNED lessons have been in your journey as a writer. Maybe they are lessons the rest of us would do well to unlearn too

 

[ericalauren]

Not everything I write has to be a masterpiece. I'm allowed to write crap.

 

[Piscator]

That there really is a squirrel proof bird feeder.

Rules rule

 

[46n2]

Almost all of it along the way.

However, so much so that I’ve got no anchor anymore and I might just be dust in the wind, eh. I’ve lost all trust within myself at this point. Nothing is solid.

So there can’t ever really be any obvious answer, mate.

Ya just gotta do what you dew.

 

[46n2]

Your question is so exceptionally sound that I’d like to attempt to further the discussion. Cuz shit gets lost that shouldn’t, ya know?

I’m a guitar player. Not a paid one but I had intended to be. I taught myself, how to play. And I sucked. Sometimes. Other times I was great cuz I’d get lucky and my heart was in it enough. It wasn’t dependable. So I ultimately went to GIT (when it was all about setting a fretboard on fire). This experience completely crippled me for a solid 2 years. It had all become a pattern, a MATHterpiece. They shrunk the fuckin guitar on me into something less than a thimble. I‘d lost my sack, so to speak.

Oops.

But a few years later I recognized I’d shrugged all that off. To your point, I stopped thinking about what I had been taught and just followed my fingers around. Now I was honestly playing. And well.

I would then objectively recognize, “You cannot properly break the rules until you know them”. That was clearly accurate. Jimi Hendrix ain’t no clown.

-The same rule applies to writing. Poetry or any other form. Know the general rules. Then fuck around some. Kick some sand around. Maybe a titty pops up. Would you look at that, best ever titty I’ve ever witnessed occurred from just kicking some sand around. Oh darn, is that not okay?

Now yer gonna need to recreate that? Good luck.

This is the general reason people remain so astonished about the Beatles. How can you continue to make rule-making (not just breaking) music for that long? How is that possible? Other people make an album or two and burn the wick at both ends, they’re duwn. It took fuckin Yoko Ono to bring you down?

So how does that happen? Doesn’t money breed complacency?

Not by itself it don’t.

Did Robert Plant do it for the money? Jimmy Page? Is John Paul Jones in it for the money? Throw John Bonham a bottle of jack and we’re good to go. And did it stop at Zeppelin IV?

What about Floyd? Does Roger Waters appear to be satisfied to you by now?

He’s not.


-So getting back at your general question?

You can’t make anything TREMENDOUS if you’re following the order of someone else completely. You will never ever make anything tremendous that way. You might be successful. But you won’t be great.

And therefore, in an effort to be great, what must you forget?

Just don’t forget what yer headed there for in the first place, eh.

And let the chips fall where they may.

 

[todski28]

That rhyming couplets done terribly is probably one of the worst things you can do to a reader,

 

[champagne1982]

I am posting this thread on both this board and the Author's Hangout because I believe it is so important.

I have spent years laboring to hone my craft as a poet, a story writer, a musician, and a lyricist. The thing that has most amazed me is how much of that wasn't learning something new, but unlearning and uncluttering to get at things I've known instinctively since I was a child. Yes, I'm still talking writing here, though life principles often tend to apply.
So what I'd like to hear, and have others hear, is what the biggest UNLEARNED lessons have been in your journey as a writer. Maybe they are lessons the rest of us would do well to unlearn too

What this question prompted me to reply with is not so much what I've had to "UNLEARN" but what I need to remember. As we gain experience and facility in playing by the rules we need to remember that clapping in time to your poem can help you come out with a wonderful steady rhythm. What we need to unlearn is that if you happen to skip a beat or have some kind of variance within the pattern let it stand. Don't correct it, because now you have stirred interest in your audience for whatever thing you're doing. Take this as a metaphor for any medium and you will see, it's not always the smooth lines of a drawing that founds a masterpiece, or the perfect colour balance that creates fashion. Sometimes you need to write a "Springtime For Hitler" in order to make the world see that most often satire tempers condemnation with humour and people are most likely to learn the lesson. It's better to have 1 imperfect masterpiece in your work than to have 100 perfectly metered mediocre poems.

Keep reading, then get writing.