Studying Creative Writing
Creative writing courses are the subject of intense debate among authors. Some say they helped enormously in terms of confidence and style; others make the excellent point that Dickens and the Brontes never went to a creative writing class. So I thought I'd share my experiences.
Upping sticks to Lancaster to study creative writing was the riskiest thing I'd done. The year was 2004; I'd achieved four good A-Levels (along with a belated GCSE Maths), and four of my chosen unis had made offers. There was only one serious contender: Lancaster, the one with a creative writing program. Yoink.
Cue commentary from concerned family and friends. "English Language sounds boring. Don't you want to do Lit instead?" "Why study at some arts college nobody's heard of?" "That's not a real degree!"
I won't say I didn't have reservations. The memory of my two rejected manuscripts was still fresh. Writing was my first love - what if I didn't have any talent? Could you be drummed off the course for being bad?
For the first few years the course was divided into two. You'd attend lectures about the tricks of the trade, given by various members of the department. These were optional but I went religiously. Then there was the real meat of the degree: the seminar, generally first thing on a Wednesday. You were expected to write a new work each week and submit it for your peers to critique. If it was a short piece you had to read it aloud. This done, your tutor weighed in with questions and suggestions.
I can still remember the first piece I submitted. Darling Loeb, a poem about the Chicago thrill killers Leopold and Loeb. I was so carried away by writing it, I never once considered how my colleagues might react. They didn't know me from Adam and I was writing about toxic gay relationships and murder! They were polite but obviously thought I was unhinged. Z (the tutor) said it reminded me of The Secret History, my then favourite book. I could've kissed her.
Z was a legend. She was intimidating to begin with - rusty voice, Gorgon stare - but her criticisms were always fair and pushed you to your limits. I couldn't have had a better first year tutor. Her speciality was plays and scripts - she'd written for Holby City - and she knew what worked, and what would sell.
Outsiders may dismiss creative writing as a soft option, but it's incredibly high maintenance. You're passing your innermost thoughts to strangers for judgement. If you've grilled them previously, don't expect them to go lightly on you. You could tell which students had taken it as an extra and which ones wanted to be writers; the former mostly dropped it by the end of the year. Or you had students like the guy we dubbed "Mozart", who wanted the cachet of being an artist without doing any of the work. He eviscerated other people's writing but refused to read or discuss his own. He didn't last a term.
I must have submitted dozens of pieces over the years, many of which were the germs for later projects. There was Daughters of Lilith, the dystopia I intend to finish someday; poems about mythological or literary characters; the Raven Street Diaries (forerunners to my blogs); miscellaneous stories, one of which starred a fiendish cat who wanted to kill her owner's girlfriend ... all of varying lengths and quality. As G (my wise and wicked third year tutor) used to say: "Your writing may be your baby, but someone has to tell you when your baby is ugly."
The classes established habits I have to this day. A first draft is never enough. Cut 10% - lots of prose is pointless background chatter. And, of course, the creative writing motto, "Show, don't tell." Don't underestimate your readers' intelligence, but don't assume they have the same esoteric tastes as you either. Always ask for a second opinion; it could be that the scene you think is innocuous is grossly offensive from another point of view, or your genius idea is a doppelgänger of a story that already exists.
When I was younger I wondered if the course was worth it. It didn't earn me a publishing deal or put me in touch with any big shots. I was also irritated by the snobbery of some of the people I met - they referred to "genre fiction" as though it was frivolous dreck, but it sold more copies than all their worthy literary tomes. Yes, I want to write the best fiction I possibly can, but I wouldn't mind making some money as well, however vulgar that may sound.
Now I'm the wrong side of thirty, I understand the lesson they were trying to impart. Writing isn't about instant gratification, it's about graft, rejection and tenacity. It's about believing in what you have to sell even when you're told to shut up and go away. Unless you're some kind of whizzkid, you won't be published at eighteen or even twenty one. You need to have training and experience before you can produce something worth reading.
Upping sticks to Lancaster to study creative writing was the riskiest thing I'd done. The year was 2004; I'd achieved four good A-Levels (along with a belated GCSE Maths), and four of my chosen unis had made offers. There was only one serious contender: Lancaster, the one with a creative writing program. Yoink.
Cue commentary from concerned family and friends. "English Language sounds boring. Don't you want to do Lit instead?" "Why study at some arts college nobody's heard of?" "That's not a real degree!"
I won't say I didn't have reservations. The memory of my two rejected manuscripts was still fresh. Writing was my first love - what if I didn't have any talent? Could you be drummed off the course for being bad?
For the first few years the course was divided into two. You'd attend lectures about the tricks of the trade, given by various members of the department. These were optional but I went religiously. Then there was the real meat of the degree: the seminar, generally first thing on a Wednesday. You were expected to write a new work each week and submit it for your peers to critique. If it was a short piece you had to read it aloud. This done, your tutor weighed in with questions and suggestions.
I can still remember the first piece I submitted. Darling Loeb, a poem about the Chicago thrill killers Leopold and Loeb. I was so carried away by writing it, I never once considered how my colleagues might react. They didn't know me from Adam and I was writing about toxic gay relationships and murder! They were polite but obviously thought I was unhinged. Z (the tutor) said it reminded me of The Secret History, my then favourite book. I could've kissed her.
Z was a legend. She was intimidating to begin with - rusty voice, Gorgon stare - but her criticisms were always fair and pushed you to your limits. I couldn't have had a better first year tutor. Her speciality was plays and scripts - she'd written for Holby City - and she knew what worked, and what would sell.
Outsiders may dismiss creative writing as a soft option, but it's incredibly high maintenance. You're passing your innermost thoughts to strangers for judgement. If you've grilled them previously, don't expect them to go lightly on you. You could tell which students had taken it as an extra and which ones wanted to be writers; the former mostly dropped it by the end of the year. Or you had students like the guy we dubbed "Mozart", who wanted the cachet of being an artist without doing any of the work. He eviscerated other people's writing but refused to read or discuss his own. He didn't last a term.
I must have submitted dozens of pieces over the years, many of which were the germs for later projects. There was Daughters of Lilith, the dystopia I intend to finish someday; poems about mythological or literary characters; the Raven Street Diaries (forerunners to my blogs); miscellaneous stories, one of which starred a fiendish cat who wanted to kill her owner's girlfriend ... all of varying lengths and quality. As G (my wise and wicked third year tutor) used to say: "Your writing may be your baby, but someone has to tell you when your baby is ugly."
The classes established habits I have to this day. A first draft is never enough. Cut 10% - lots of prose is pointless background chatter. And, of course, the creative writing motto, "Show, don't tell." Don't underestimate your readers' intelligence, but don't assume they have the same esoteric tastes as you either. Always ask for a second opinion; it could be that the scene you think is innocuous is grossly offensive from another point of view, or your genius idea is a doppelgänger of a story that already exists.
When I was younger I wondered if the course was worth it. It didn't earn me a publishing deal or put me in touch with any big shots. I was also irritated by the snobbery of some of the people I met - they referred to "genre fiction" as though it was frivolous dreck, but it sold more copies than all their worthy literary tomes. Yes, I want to write the best fiction I possibly can, but I wouldn't mind making some money as well, however vulgar that may sound.
Now I'm the wrong side of thirty, I understand the lesson they were trying to impart. Writing isn't about instant gratification, it's about graft, rejection and tenacity. It's about believing in what you have to sell even when you're told to shut up and go away. Unless you're some kind of whizzkid, you won't be published at eighteen or even twenty one. You need to have training and experience before you can produce something worth reading.
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