Moving the Hand

You'll see them inside the art galleries, sitting on a bench with their sketchpads, copying the works of the masters. These are artists learning something about their craft, learning something visceral about what it feels like to draw those lines. They are acquiring the knowledge of line and form and proportion through the act of copying.

Writers don't do enough of this. We think reading is enough. I have read the occasional how-to book that recommends actually writing out, copying, passages from excellent writers. Have I done it? Only a paragraph here and there. The more I think of it, though, the more I think it might be a good idea. You could feel the rhythm of the sentences, understand that flow in a visceral way.

The parallel to the visual art includes the fact that those people sketching are not working in the same medium - it doesn't mean they aren't learning anything. Just because I use a word processing program on a computer and not a fountain pen, quill, or an Underwood manual typewriter, doesn't mean there is nothing to be learned by typing out those passages.

It would have to be a private effort, though. Unlike the artist's sketches, the end product of the writer's exercise will look just like the original. I guess the attribution should always be at the top, in case one dies and the literary executors think these passages are those of the deceased. Or never save the files - because the value of the experience is in what you learn from the retyping, not from the rereading.