News at Eleven: Most readers of "The Program Era" are likely

to be persuaded that the creative-writing-program experience has had an effect on many American fiction writers. Does this mean that creative writing can, in fact, be taught? What is usually said is that you can't teach inspiration, but you can teach craft. What counted as craft for James, though, was very different from what counted as craft for Hemingway. What counts as craft for Ann Beattie (who teaches at the University of Virginia) must be different from what counts as craft for Jonathan Safran Foer (who teaches at N.Y.U.). There is no "craft of fiction" as such.

And, even on the level of "just getting people to write," different writers, when confronted with the blank page, have different modes of attack.

from The New Yorker: Show or Tell

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