Reader,
What kind of writer are you?
We often approach that question in terms of genre. "I'm a poet" or "I write personal essays" or "I'm working on a paranormal steampunk romance novel."
There's nothing wrong with classifying literature by genre. It's a practice that's as old as Aristotle, even if his original classification system was a lot simpler than what you'd find in any library, Barnes & Noble, or indie bookstore these days. (To say nothing of Amazon and its thousands of categories.)
But what if we were to classify our writing by its purpose instead of genre? It's a question I've been mulling this week, after reading a short blog post by Alan Jacobs. He poses that question, and though his scope is limited to what he calls "thinker-writers," I think his classifications are helpful:
- Diagnostic: "Explainers" who are "trying to explain What Is Wrong")
- Prescriptive: writers who prescribe cures or ways to live a good life
- Therapeutic: folks who "try to help us manage our misery"
Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, there's a good chance that your writing falls into one of those categories. So, to return to my opening question, what kind of writer are you?
To answer my own question, I aim to be a therapeutic writer. I have no interest in diagnosing the ills of our age, nor do I feel qualified to offer prescriptions for any of the challenges we face. I see my perspective squarely captured in Jacobs's comment, in which he further explains how such writers "help us manage our misery":
[Therapeutic writers] may or may not have diagnoses of [our misery], they may or may not have prescriptions for cure, but they know that while we're in the midst of it, we need entertainment, distraction, or consolation—ideally all three.
Seinfeld, that famous TV show "about nothing," strikes me as a perfect example. Do its writers have thoughts about the world as it is? For sure. But the episodes are not thinly-veiled diagnoses or prescriptions. They exist to amuse you. To make you laugh. To give you a scene that you can't help but replay for your coworkers around the water cooler the next day, even though you know you'll absolutely flub it and ruin the joke.
The show has very real insights into the human condition. Sometimes profoundly uncomfortable ones. But they hit different because they come in this "therapeutic" packaging.
I'm not sure if this line of questioning helps you. It helps me because, as Jacobs notes, we live in an age overrun by "diagnostic" writers. And as a writer who is also a Christian, I've found that such circles often prize "diagnostic" and "prescriptive" writing over the "therapeutic." Anything remotely "therapeutic" tends to take a drastically "prescriptive" or "diagnostic" tone. (Which says a lot about how we view the world and our fellow people, but we'll save that topic for another day.)
So, I invite you to sit with this email's question. It's one I won't be putting aside anytime soon. In fact, it's spurred me to create something new—something decisively therapeutic—which I'll be sharing here soon.
Keep your stick on the ice.
Frank.