Painting God’s Knuckle

Every writer goes through this. You meet someone, you are at a party or in a restaurant, and someone says, “I hear you’re a writer.” Yes. And then they say they have a fabulous story to tell but they need someone to write it for them. The story is incredible, they assure you, but they don’t know how to write. So if they tell you the story and you write it for them, then they will split the fortune it makes with you.

It happens all the time. They launch into this long story about the grandfather who fell overboard while fishing in the Mediterranean and swam 20 miles to a port where they signed on a ship and sailed to America, the beautiful mother who worked as a tavern maid in Ireland but was such a beauty that a men came from miles and miles hoping to attract her favors. Sometimes the stories happened to them - a horrific childhood (though the way those books sell today, I might jump at that one) or a remarkable career. They assure you people would buy it by the tens of thousands.

When that happens to me I always tell them they should start by writing it down themselves. “Oh,” they say, “but I can’t write.” Can you you write out a check? How do you pay your bills? Just write down what you told me. “I can’t,” they say. “That’s what I need you for.”

In Bonnie Friedman’s book Writing Past Dark she tells a wonderful parable that her husband made up one time. A young painter goes to Michelangelo and says, “I have seen your paintings and they are glorious, please teach me to paint the soul. I’ll pay you anything but I want to learn to paint the soul.” Michelangelo considers this and then tells the young man, “Go home and practice painting God’s knuckle. Practice until you can paint the shape and form, the texture of the skin, the fine web of veins beneath the skin, the muscle and bone beneath that. When you have succeeded in painting God’s knuckle then I will be able to teach you to paint the soul.”

This is an impressive story and I have been thinking about it a lot. Its message is simple - learn your craft. Whatever your craft is, you must work at it, learn it thoroughly, not be afraid to make mistakes, not be intimidated by failure. Just stop all the fuss, sit down, shut up, and learn your craft.

Back when I taught writing I didn’t so much teach writing per se as teach people to put the pen to the paper and get their hand moving. That was my method. I used a combination of discussion, guided visualizations, and then just put that pen on that piece of paper and keep your hand moving until I say stop. It was a remarkable learning experience for me. I was dumbfounded at the reasons people could find for not doing that. They would ask endless questions, they would object to my telling them what to do (if you don’t want to do what I am telling you to do why are you paying to take this class?) It was amazing.

I had one student that, even after all these years, remains a favorite. She was a little overwhelming when she first joined the class - you could smell her perfume when she got out of her car and the classroom hardly seemed big enough to accommodate her big hair, pushed-up breasts, and towering high heels. But she LOVED the class. She would put her pen on the paper, grinning from ear to ear, and write and write and write. When it came time to read, her hand was the first in the air. She would stand up and proudly read the most god-awful schlock I had ever heard. And she was thrilled with it.

I remember her for two reasons - one, she loved writing. She loved it! She practiced and practiced and practiced. And, two, she has since sold three romance novels to a popular romance press. I tried reading them - I can’t. But lots of people can and she is having a ball.

Learn your craft. Paint God’s knuckle. Who knows, maybe there are collectors just dying to add to their knuckle portrait collections.

Thanks for reading.