Writing Wrongs
Introduction: What is Creative Writing, and why are we all doing more of it?
Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, defines creative writing as:
Any writing of original composition…It goes outside the bounds of normal, professional, journalistic, academic and technical forms.
Almost everyone I interviewed for this essay agreed that creative writing is more popular than ever. There was a lone voice of dissent, from Reading-based poet Ashley Harrold, who maintained that numbers for the groups in which he is involved – a workshop and a Poets’ Café – are steady but not rising.
But his view was not typical. The Writers’ Conference, at Winchester University, for example, has mushroomed tenfold since it began in 1980. Welsh writer Phil Carradice read nearly 700 entries while judging the last Rhys Davies Short Story Competition, and Barbara Large, Founder-Director of Winchester University’s annual writing conference, reports that the 2007 event’s accompanying competition attracted more than 800 entries in the category for young poets alone. Not to mention 700 short stories, and more than 350 first pages of a novel.
Writing is now widely taught, not only in universities and schools, but in prisons, as part of mental health care, and in adult education colleges, where it features in prospectuses alongside Italian and cake icing. There is a growing trend for large organisations, from Marks and Spencer to the British Antarctic Survey, to hire writers in residence.
And, with more magazines, web sites, and TV channels hungry for fresh scripts meaning more outlets for publication, the craft of writing has rarely been more visible. These days, you have to shout pretty loudly to be heard over the babble.
But why should more people feel inspired to put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, now? Some of the possible explanations swirl with contradiction. On one hand, all leisure pursuits seem to be on the rise – from salsa classes to sudoku. (This despite, the fact that we appear to be working longer hours than ever.)
Has a rise in literacy been a contributory factor? Yet the Skills for Life survey published by the Department for Education and Skills in October 2003 reports that one in six respondents (16 per cent, or 5.2 million adults) had lower level literacy skills.
Could computing be the reason, with people happy to tap out on a screen what they wouldn’t have bothered to write on paper? As John Moat points out in his eloquent memoir about the creation of the Arvon Foundation, The Founding of Arvon which runs residential creative writing courses, a student is ‘as likely these days to have a laptop as a toothbrush.’ Despite the depressing statistics from the DfES, we are more computer literate than ever, and the Internet has created a host of opportunities for writers to network and promote themselves, to receive feedback, and showcase their work – from blogging to online competitions and forums.
Barbara Large points out that books are cheaper now, and more accessible. Book groups have taken off in recent years, in pubs, libraries, homes, prisons, through newspapers, web sites (even the social networking site Facebook has a ‘my favourite read’ feature) and on television thanks to Richard and Judy.
There are other considerations as well. We are, in theory at least, better educated, more affluent and aspirational. We live longer, and spend more years in retirement. Writing is no longer considered to be exclusively for an educated elite. Arguably, being assailed by information on all sides, we are more able to absorb and take things in. With more of us journeying more frequently and further afield than previous generations, it’s not difficult to see why travel writing, as a particular example, has never been more competitive.
High-profile millionaire authors such as JK Rowling have doubtlessly caused some to hanker after glamour and fortune along with literary immortality. It’s easy to understand what Russell Celyn Jones means when he reflects: ‘Writers have become the product now.’
Even supermodel Naomi Campbell has done her best to get in on the act, with her novel, Swan, which she allegedly has not even read, let alone written. (She is reported to have put said: ‘I just didn’t have time to sit down and write a book.’)
Dr Johnson famously asserted: ‘No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.’ Yet barely a handful of those who turn up diligently for their weekly writing class, or follow correspondence courses will make a penny or see their efforts or names in print. So why are they writing, and who for? For pleasure, stimulation, therapy? For the love of it? To be read, to be heard? Do they just want some company? Do they, as Rilke urged, ask themselves’ in the most silent hour of their night’ whether they ‘must write’, and then ‘build their lives in accordance with this necessity?’ Or would they be just as happy going to macramé on Wednesday evenings?
No doubt people write for all these reasons, and more.
Does More Mean Less?
I wondered whether the standard of what is being produced has risen, along with the volume, or whether we are guilty of creating what William Jay Smith describes as:
‘Creative writing writing – competent, passionless stuff learned in workshops and seminars and published in Mickey Mouse magazines’?
Welsh poet, novelist, broadcaster and historian Phil Carradice argues: “While there is a lot of dross, the standard seems to be much higher than it was 10 or 20 years ago. There are some pretty good writers out there.”
Ashley Harrold agrees: “There is a lot of good material being produced. Rubbish doesn’t usually make it into the public forum. There is a large amount of adequate stuff …but the exceptional is rare.”
The Creative Writing Industry
A ‘creative writing industry’ has shot up alongside this growing army of largely unpublished and unpaid would-be wordsmiths. The last issue of 2007 of Mslexia, the magazine for women writers, carries seven adverts for graduate and undergraduate university courses, 11 advertisements for a variety of writing related services, from literary consultancies to mentoring, coaching and self-publishing. Also featured are five writing competitions, 10 non-university courses, two writers’ organisations and five books.
The December 2007 issue of Writer’s Forum has no fewer than 16 advertisements for a similar array of writing services, one for some software, five for non-university courses, two for university BA and MA creative writing degrees, and two for competitions. Not to mention its directory, which lists a vast array of classified adverts.
Poet Polly Clark emailed: “If you’ve done your homework, you’ll know who to work with, and what is a good course. Payment doesn’t guarantee publishing success, and it is a very naïve writer who believes it does, or gets angry when it doesn’t.”
Carradice commented that several of his students have reported “very bad experiences” with these kinds of organisations. That’s not to suggest that some don’t provide useful services, but, tellingly, those I tried to contact who earned money from the creative writing industry, who had a commercial interest – Mslexia, a writing coach, Writer’s Forum – declined to respond.
Such organisations exist purely to relieve aspiring writers of their money. But I also wonder whether any of these organisations are sometimes guilty of giving false hope, of making students believe they can write when maybe they can’t, at least not professionally, of helping to foster a culture in which everyone gets a prize.
I should probably declare an interest here. As the ‘graduate’ of three writing retreats, two Arvon Foundation courses, 18 months of adult education classes, one writing coach, countless workshops and as a current MA student, I have not inconsiderable first-hand experience of the creative writing industry.
I found the writing coach a monumental waste of time, and she would have represented a waste of money, too, had I paid for her services. Arvon Foundation courses, on the other hand, are unfailingly helpful and inspiring, not least because they offer time and a space for writing. The adult education course was well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual, while the MA has helped me develop a voice and given me much some much-needed discipline in my writing, while also, I am sure, making me a better reader.
Barbara Large points out that creative writing industry, outside the university setting at least, is new and not officially evaluated - anyone can set themselves up in business, just as anyone can nail a plaque to their door and proclaim themselves to be a counsellor or psychotherapist.
But, admittedly the issue of how you would regulate this industry subjectively is fraught with difficulty.
It is not meaningful to assess organisations in terms of the volume of work its students produce, or on whether or not such work of ‘publishable’ quality.
In this I have to agree with Patricia Duncker, Professor of Modern Literature at Manchester University, who writes in the arts section of the British Council web site:
‘So much badly written nonsense and best-selling vacuous cliché is published … that being ‘publishable’ cannot be a failsafe guide to quality.’
In any case, only 20 per cent of graduates from even Britain’s most prestigious creative writing MA programme, at the University of East Anglia, become published writers.
While some say true originality should be the deciding factor when it comes to assessing work, this is just as tricky to define, making regulation an almost impossibly complex issue to resolve.
Can Writing Be Taught?
The argument over whether writers can be made, whether the craft of writing can be taught, and indeed learnt, is hardly new.
As early as the eighteenth century, Mary Shelley wrote:
‘I recommend the mind’s being put into a proper train, and then left to itself. Fixed rules cannot be given …The mind …cannot be created by the teacher, though it may be cultivated, and its real mind is not, cannot powers found out.’
But what did more modern practitioners have to say?
For Barbara Large, although not everyone can turn out copy which will be published, everyone can improve and increase the enjoyment they derive from writing. In that sense, then, yes, writing can be taught.
Poet John Hegley told me: “You can nurture talent and teach tricks of the trade but you can’t teach someone the magic.”
For Ashley Harrold: ”A voice can’t be taught, a voice must be discovered.”
Even some of those who make their living from teaching creative writing are sceptical.
Jack Epps, of the University of Southern California writes in Graeme Harper’s book Teaching Creative Writing :
‘What cannot be crafted is the talent, the soul of a writer.’
Another thing that cannot really be taught, the factor which for Phil Carradice is the single most important factor in writing success, is discipline.
Roger Scruton would agree. In the Sunday Times Review , in a reactionary rant slating artist Tracey Emin for not having had the same formal training as Mozart, he avers:
‘Artistic ability is not like scientific knowledge: you cannot acquire it … by diligent study. There comes a point where a leap of the imagination is required.’
Graeme Harper, a teacher at Portsmouth University, states in Teaching Creative Wring that the subject can be described as ‘an elaborate educational hoax’, a ‘hopeful but doomed activity.’ He claims that writers are better off without formal education, that most of what needs to be learnt can be acquired through life experience, travelling and reading.
David Myers in The Elephants Teach , which traces the history of creative writing since the latter part of the nineteenth century, laments that:
‘The idea of hiring writers to teach writing has never won unquestioned acceptance, not has creative writing – the classroom subject - progressed much beyond apologising for itself.’ .
Writing and teaching are surely distinct disciplines, with the best writers not necessarily making the best teachers. You can write without being able to teach, but I am not convinced the reverse is true. (Our teacher at the local adult education college was always evasive when asked what he wrote himself. It did not inspire confidence.)
Someone who would wholeheartedly agree is John Moat, who, in The Founding of Arvon , discusses his apprenticeship with the poet John Howland Beaumont:
‘….the only person who can teach the technique of writing is an experienced writer …teaching is proved by experience that is wholehearted and profoundly relevant. It is the authority that can relate the specifics of technique to the spirit of writing. Which means the authority … of one who has ‘been in it with all his or her heart.’
This is encapsulated in Arvon’s motto, The fire in the flint shows not till it be struck.
What can you teach?
If you cannot teach talent, genius or creativity, what can you teach? Certainly, there are aspects of the craft which can be passed on – Hegley’s ‘tricks of the trade’, for example.
As Lajos Egri puts it in The Art of Dramatic Writing :
‘If you know the principles, you will be a better craftsman and artist.’
Tuition can also give students the opportunity to develop and increase their own understanding of their craft.
Perhaps the greatest strength of all creative writing tuition is in its capacity for forcing people to write, for making them better editors of their own work, and for bringing them together with others who share their passion. For many, a creative writing class may be the first time they have shared their work, or received any kind of meaningful feedback. It may be the first time they realise they have any sort of ability.
Teaching Creative Writing in Universities
The place of creative writing in universities, specifically, has long been mired in controversy, particularly in Britain, with mutual mistrust between some academics and professional writers. Traditionally, the study of ‘English’ has been about the critical study of literary forms, rather than their creation. Possibly some academics see creative writing as a challenge to this tradition.
The first chair of English literature at Harvard was only appointed in 1876, and the English honours degree at Oxford was not established until less than 20 years later. Both factors have directly affected the construction of postgraduate creative writing programmes.
Such debate has not stopped the subject from becoming increasingly popular in the university setting, with dozens of undergraduate and postgraduate courses offering everything from novel writing to creative non-fiction. (At the last count there were more than 12 Masters programmes on offer in screenwriting alone.) Many traditional English Literature courses now also include creative writing modules. In the current higher education climate, students have become customers who expect a tangible result beyond simple education for their money, and, some of the time, they may be disappointed.
Creative writing as a university subject is much less controversial in the United States. As Russell Celyn Jones, writing states in the Richmond Review:
‘the creative writing business is like the psychotherapy business, something the Americans are more comfortable with than the British …The problem sets in when the party never ends. Some students go from three years of undergraduate workshops onto MA courses … capping it all … teaching … without publishing anything. That is taking a good thing too far.’
Phil Carradice’s main concern is that degree courses are not churning out more creative writers, but more teachers: “Who will go on to produce more courses for people to attend and churn out more. Sit down and write your book – that’s the best training.”
To what extent should these degree courses be preparing their students for life beyond university? Especially for undergraduate courses, should a job at the end be the ultimate goal? Are universities churning out graduates with paper qualifications but nothing to do at the end of their three years’ study? In that sense, creative writing is no guiltier than, say, Media Studies. And it’s probably not the prime reason most students sign up for university courses in the first place. There are no particular reports of long queues of Creative Writing graduates at unemployment offices.
Yet if students are not being prepared for definite jobs, then perhaps at least they should be introduced to the publishing industry. Barbara Large, at Winchester, is keen on forging connections, and encouraging student work placements.
In that sense, should teachers be urging their students to write stuff that stands a chance of seeing the light of day, work that the publishing industry is looking for?
Celyn Jones is astonished that
‘We no longer train people in coal mining .. yet we encourage students to write at the literary end of the market, even as it is shrinking.’
In Teaching Creative Writing , radio drama teacher Steve May worries about the tension between teaching within the extremely narrow range of actually commissioned radio plays, and giving students freedom to write the stuff they want. He is always clear with his students about what the market really commissions.
This combination of free reign, mixed with a healthy dose of realism, must be the best compromise.
Conclusion
The last word goes to Warwick University’s Professor David Morley, who writes in his blog . He sums up perfectly the value and pitfalls of creative writing teaching:
'Writing requires nerve, stamina – as well as talent, and editorial discrimination. ... Although learning creative writing can be fun, becoming and being a writer is a far more ruthless, wilder game... Creative writing can be taught most effectively when students have some talent and vocation ... If a teacher can shape the talent, and steer that vocation … then … creative writing should be taught as a craft. The whole point of teaching creative writing, however, is that students must learn to … guide themselves.’
For some, he adds :
‘ the creative writing industry is a cartoon world, a cloud cuckoo land of fantasy accomplishment and vacuum-sealed reputation.
'It is evidently much more open-ended. At best, the teaching of creative writing provides a moving edge for literary evolutions and language’s revelations…An open book of possibility, the creative academy is an open space, but .. just sometimes, we need rewriting.’
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