Just back from a Marilyn Horn Master Class at Carnegie Hall, courtesy of a friend who's a big contributor there. Five fabulous young singers, chosen by audition, being coached word by word and note by note, on stage, by Marilyn Horn. I've sat in on pianists' lessons, and once on a piano master class, but this was totally fascinating in a different way, because I know so little about the technical issues involved in singing. These people would come out and sing their chosen song through, and I'd think, Gee, that was great. And then Horn would have them start again, and stop them every few words to ask for a breath right here, or a harder hit on the consonant, or more nose and less throat, and by the time they'd worked their way through the song like that the performance was much better -- even I could tell.

So what's the point? Horn told the story of a singer (I forget who) who, upon being complimented by someone who said, "Great job!" answered in a huff (and a foreign accent), "Is not job! Is art!" Horn said, "Yes, it's art, but it's a job, too." The application of this to writing is obvious to me: the importance of mastering the technical details can't be overstressed. Yes, you need passion. Yes, you need something to say that's worth saying. But you also need to know that short sentences build tension better than long ones and that dialect is much better shown in cadence than in odd spelling. Every technical feat you master feels like a trick, and writers sometimes don't like to consciously, deliberately use them: it seems like cheating. But then you hear a singer waiting just a millisecond past the beat to come in, and you realize how much more moving that line is than when he sang it the first time. If he didn't feel the meaning of the line he couldn't make it moving no matter what he did. But that he did feel it wasn't enough, until he learned how to work on it.

The same for writers. Which is, I suppose, a plug for critical self-editing. And for editors.