Next I took what I call the shit course. It was at one of Chicago’s most famous universities, and it was taught by another well-known author. The first day, he swaggered in, looked at us with contempt, and said, “What makes you think the shit you write is worth reading? What makes you think the world needs to hear anything you have to say?”

This teaching style was common at that university. “We know everything. You know nothing” was their motto, and this professor and author could have been their poster boy. He told us we were shit and then proceeded to shit on us and our writing throughout the entire course. He was scary, but I held on, clinging to the hope that he was wrong. It turned out that he was wrong—totally wrong. Neither concern—whether your writing is worth reading and whether the world needs to hear it—has anything to do with being a successful writer. Writers have enough to do without having to wrestle with such intangible issues.

Some great writers are lousy teachers, and some mediocre writers and nonwriters are great teachers. The two need not go hand in hand. Maxwell Perkins was a great editor who coached Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, James Jones (From Here to Eternity), and Marjorie Rawlings (The Yearling), but never wrote a word of fiction in his life. Picasso would not talk about his painting, saying, “If I could put it into words, I wouldn’t paint it.”

- Excerpt from Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver. A book I’m reading for my Short Fiction subject next semester.