Y'dig?

Do you think that writing can be taught?

No.

So what do you teach in your writing seminar at Syracuse?

I try to help people become the best possible editors of their own work, to help them become conscious of the things they do well, of the things they need to look at again, of the wells of material they have not even begun to dip their buckets into. You want them to ask more of themselves, to ask more of every sentence. These are really values, I suppose, frames of thinking rather than discrete bits of information. You don’t teach information in a writing workshop.