On Wonky Ducks and Ugly Ducklings

Why craft is about letting go as well as tooling up

So I was flipping through a notebook, looking for something else, and I came across a scribble. Learning, as a writer, to get out of your own way/light was all it said. I couldn’t remember what prompted me to say that, and I couldn’t work out what I must have meant - but I must have meant something, for me to bother to get out my habit notebook and find a pen.

And then I was talking to an aspiring writer who’s going through the ugly duckling stage, where a course or some hard individual work has sent their technical skill and understanding up a step, but their instincts and intuitions have yet to catch up. They have new tools but they’re still awkward, self-conscious and clumsy in wielding them, and their new writing seems worse than their old.

And I suddenly remembered the story of the Wooden Duck Making Kit.