Listening to Experts

Experts often don't know what they know.

Some of what they know they have known so long they can't remember that it needed to be learned, and praticed, and revised, and learned again until it was part of them, like throwing a baseball or flipping an egg.

Some of what they know always came naturally to them, so they think every other writer must be blessed with the same gift.  

Some of what they know they cannot communicate in any useful way.  The are, after all, authors and poets not teachers, although some teach classes as well as work at their craft.

Some of what they know applies exclusively to their own work.  

The benefits and difficulties in talking to successful writers are often the same as speaking with experts in any field.  

The benefits are many and sometimes seem miraculous.  Certain things that are wrong just jump right out to them.  They can zero in on concrete problems and solutions; sometimes changing "a" to "the" changes your writing world.  They can share that they, too, receive rejections and experience anxiety.  They can help you brush off unimportant crazy-making things and guide you to the core.

The difficulties are frustrating, often both for you and for them.  There are approaches they cannot recall not knowing, there are processes they have stopped using years ago because they did not find them either useful or necessary for them, they have tacit or instinctive knowledge about certain aspects of their work so they can't communicate it to others.