Mock Duck

Creative Writing Courses

Creative Writing Courses, The Debut Authors Festival, 2007

 

This event explored the pros and cons of the creative writing course - although, as most of the speakers were involved with creative writing courses in one way or another, it was perhaps a bit more pro than con. However it was a really interesting discussion. I have tried to pick out a few of the issues touched upon below.

Chair Jenny Brown of Jenny Brown Associates kicked off the session with an anecdote about how her agency had received a manuscript, accompanied by a CV claiming the writer had obtained a distinction from the UEA Creative Writing Masters. Of course, this turned out to be a hoax, but she did admit - to her credit - that the claim had pushed the ms to the top of the slushpile and it received a careful reading as a result.

So – to creative writing courses. The question was asked: “considered prestigious by some and unnecessary by others, are they now an essential part of becoming a successful novelist?”

It was certainly an eye-opener to hear Creative Writing is one of the fastest growing academic sectors, with many English Literature departments either moving to offer creative writing as a degree in English Literature Departments or turning more towards creative writing within existing English degrees.

It was also clear that there is a lot of debate even amongst those who taught Creative Writing. Alan Bissett (tutor of Creative Writing at Glasgow University) talked of the difficulty some tutors who are also writers have had with the different perception and restrictions imposed by the academic framework and the expectations of the institution. Kirsty Gunn, (professor of Creative Writing at Dundee University) talked of her interest in trying to set up a free space, a kind of space where writers could come together and explore. And the difficulties of satisfactorally shaping an atmosphere that encourages creativity within an academic context were discussed at some length.

As the panelists made clear, the gap between expectation and what a course can possibly deliver can also be a point of tension. There is no guarantee of publication, in fact the publication rates for graduates is still quite low and there is also no guarantee that people will get what they want from a course: a course can’t write a novel for you and even a startling academic result cannot get it published.

However, it is clear, that this is an industry with enormous demand, quite independent of the numbers of books published; it seems, there is an insatiable demand to be become a writer and anything that seems to take people closer will have a market. This also pays a part in the rise of other industries with would-be writers as the customer such as editorial consultancies, short residential courses and mentoring.

It was also interesting to note – just in the Debut Festival as a whole – how many writers found agents, not by submission processes, but by attending courses (either short residential courses or academic courses) or being recommended by a respected individual in the field. So, networking also seems to be another essential aspect that Creative Writing Courses touch upon and can, perhaps, give some access to.

Julian Gough’s recent article in Prospect Magazine questioned the prevalence of the creative writing course in the US and how it is becoming increasingly the norm here. He warns of the similarity of style and inward-looking subject-matter this encourages.

The thing that perhaps worries me more is that the overall trend moving more this way may favour those of certain backgrounds or with a level of support. These courses and other writers services are not cheap. I know that people will say “ah but if you are determined enough”. But it seems to me that this is often said about barriers that actually are more about money than determination. For, in actual fact, a lot of people will NOT have to be that determined to go on such a course, if it is not a major financial risk to them. Whilst others, who may well be determined, but also have other considerations including children, financial dependents, or the need for a course that can guarantee some future job opportunities (and no supportive relatives to help), may feel that they simply cannot sign up.

And idly imagining here - with it now being possible to study Creative Writing as an undergraduate and postgraduate - what is the result of writers who have lived a life almost predominantly doing Creative Writing Courses? Writing about writing? Or universities? This is not necessarily bad either, but I do think it is important to have a wide variety of voices, experiences and styles out there.

Which is why I think it is so important that however much these industries grow, that there must be other routes kept open for people all over society – such as the old-fashioned, unpopular, much-maligned slushpile. If it becomes the case that courses and other methods that require large financial outlays from the writer are overly-relied upon to filter out talent and commitment, might we not be in danger of missing out on some great material and experiences from elsewhere?

As usual, I certainly don’t have the answers to any of this. But thought, at least, I could pose some questions. What do you all think about this?

Are Creative Writing Courses exciting places with opportunities to really develop your voice and examine writing with others who are similarly engaged with the subject? Or, is it becoming increasingly the case that writers are expected to pay out huge sums of money, meet the right people, pay for consultancy/editorial services – just in order to reach the starting line? Or both, for that matter. Doesn't have to be an argument, would just be interested in what people think.

 

Article about Debut Fest

An interesting overview of most of the events at this year's Debut Festival here. And who is that rather eloquent and insightful individual burbling on about opportunities for unpublished writers? Hehe.

That reminds me, I still want to write a post about the Creative Writing Courses debate I went to at the Debut. I'll put something up later today...

Guest Post: Review of "Estates" by Lynsey Hanley

Further to the post below (somewhere in the mists of blog) about the Debut Festival discussion called Britain Today, my sister has sent me through a review of Lynsey Hanley's book, "Estates". (Might be of interest to you, Muppetbaby, as we were discussing it before.)

Hanley was one of the speakers in the event and raised so many interesting issues that my sister and I both instantly charged off to buy her book - which my sister nabbed first. (Typical!) Published by Granta it is a sort of mixture of social commentary, history and personal experience.

Here is what my sister has to say about it:

Estates - interesting, if sometimes muddled

If you don't know much about the history of council estates (as I don't) then you will find much of the material in this book fascinating and thought-provoking. Hanley convinces as she shows how many of the poorest and most vulnerable people have been betrayed by a state that was content to shove them off into low quality, poorly thought out social housing. Particularly interesting is the material about the "wall in the head" - the cultural and psychological effects of growing up in a homogenous, deprived working-class estate, based on Hanley's own experiences.

That said, Hanley's clearly confused feelings about council estates result at times in confused arguments.

It is not really clear how Hanley sees social housing, ultimately - as doomed to failure or a missed opportunity or a limited success. At times she implies all three. And what are the fundamental reasons for the failures of social housing: is it inherent in state provision, a problem of limited resources, a result of architectural design or geography, a by-product of economics and social class?

All are mentioned but it is hard to get a clear idea of where, ultimately, the blame lies.

One argument Hanley is attached to is that it is an inherently bad idea to take only people of low social class and stick them all together in large numbers in a relatively isolated geographical location. This class homogeneity is the crime of most council estates; the cause of so much social ill. She even advocates bussing children to distant schools to counteract it. Hanley's argument is in part aspirational - people need to see that there are other possibilities besides the narrow world they inhabit - but also that different types of neighbours keep people up to scratch - and stops social stigma attaching to an estate. Yet she never produces any evidence. After all, one might argue that poor people are more likely to suffer the devastating effects of their relative social deprivation when they are placed among the more privileged - whether at school or at home - and thus more clearly shown to be at the bottom of the heap, than in estates where they are more-or-less equal to those around. I'm not saying Hanley is wrong, but I think this, her central thesis, should have been explored in more depth.

A good read though - leaves you wanting to know more.

 

Debut Fest - Britain Today

Fresh back from The Debut Festival.

On Saturday I went to an event called Britain Today with four writers discussing their difference experiences of growing up in Britain and the experiences of children growing up now.

This discussion was everything you want from such an event – interesting, thought-provoking, lively – and even caused me to purchase a couple of books at the end, so a success for them too.

Sarfraz Manzoor did a reading from his book describing his childhood in Britain after his family moved from Pakistan when he was two, Daljit Nagra looks at the immigrant experience from many angles and read some of his poems from his collection Look We Have Coming to Dover (he was a fantastic reader), Lynsey Hanley talked about her book Estates and her life growing up on a council estate of 60,000 people outside Birmingham in the 80s and Libby Brooks talked about her book The Story of Childhood, where she interviewed children all over the UK in different walks of life.

So many themes and ideas came up I can’t go into them all here: parental attitudes, the closed lives of the working class in council estates and the parallel closed lives of groups of immigrants who in parts of the UK are becoming increasingly segregated, the way that society is obsessively protective of one set of children and demonises another set (that usually is in dire need of our protection).

All this was fascinating and helped by the fact the panel bounced off each other so well.

But the thing I started thinking about most afterwards that seemed to link all of this was how our attitude is changing to public space. It has struck me for a while that we value public space less and less, either building all over it or moving to private ones (such as bookshops and private gyms taking over from public libraries and public swimming pools).

Lynsey Hanley was talking about parental fears. She said she returned to her old estate recently and where all the kids had used to play out, now there was noone. She wondered if everyone had just become old, but no – every now and again a door would open and a child would pop out with some parents, straight to a car and then away. Although this fear of the outside is always presented as parental fear about child abusers etc she believes it has more to do with the rise of car ownership. Our outside spaces are now designed more for cars than for people. They are private spaces, cocoons that we can travel about in and never have to encounter the outside world. The spaces where children play are no longer safe because of the car and our outside spaces are now more about them than children playing. And yet noone – noone – ever talks about this, in comparison to talking about the dangers of paedophiles – a very rare thing in comparison to car accidents.

This seemed to link in to what Libby Brooks was saying about how, as members of the community, we no longer can step in and discipline a child - say if it is being mean to another child on the street. Some people are even fearful of helping or speaking to children in case they are seen as a paedophile. Perhaps this has to do with changing communities where families don’t necessarily live next door to each other anymore. But it also seemed to me that it lies in our own attitude and our attitude to public space and community life in general.

Lynsey Hanley described something she calls the wall in the head – from a German phrase describing how the Berlin Wall still exists in the minds and psychologies of East and West Germans – she uses it to describe how people in estates put limits on themselves and their expectations - but I wondered how many of us have that wall in some form or another. Not just in terms of our internal barriers to our own talents and expectations - but barriers towards each other and community.

We no longer have to engage with public space and our position just as a citizen anymore. We carry our private space into the public space and treat it as the same. We walk along listening to our own personal music as though we were in our bedrooms; we chat loudly to our friends on mobiles on the street, on the bus, on the train, so we don’t have to talk to strangers or properly respect the nature of the public space as somewhere to be respectful of other people's needs, space and silence; we ride around in cars rather than engage with others on public transport. If we go to an event and enjoy it, we don't turn to a stranger sitting next to us and smile - we pick up a mobile and text a friend.

My neighbours have just built a massive 3m wall all along the side of our tiny garden. It is ugly, oppressive and blocks the light. But, more than that, it seems strangely symbolic. Of their relationship with their neighbours and their attitude to where they live. These walls are going up everywhere round here. The small communal gardens at the back filled with barriers and concrete. In the front, the small flowering gardens that enchanted us when we first moved in here are – one-by-one – being ripped out and turned into car parking spaces. Like plinths to the car. Tiny houses, yet some families on this street own three cars and use the ripping out of the gardens give them several spaces to keep as many, and as conveniently, as they can.

We are supposed to be trying to reduce the numbers of cars on the streets. We are supposed to be trying to do something about global warming, we are supposed to be doing something about getting kids to run around more. Perhaps if we stopped being so distrustful and deliberately creating this society of strangers, got to know our neighbours and properly respected and protected our public space we would not need to hide away in our private worlds.

Leena wanted a purpose for literature. I'm not sure I think there need be one. But perhaps Sarfraz Manzoor's intention with his is a more important purpose than one might suppose. He said he wanted someone to pass an old woman on the street, perhaps she has no English, no interaction outside her immediate community - but perhaps his book can offer a little increase in understanding of what her life might have been like. Sounds a small thing, but with walls, both psychological and physical, cutting us off from each other - perhaps not a small thing at all.

Debut Festival

A week tomorrow is The Debut's Author's Festival - an annual weekend of writer and reader related talks and events at The Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.

Is there a single one of my friends and acquaintances I haven't already bored to death with my eulogising about The Debut Author's Festival? If you are one of the happy few still to be initiated, or are come back from the dead and ready for some more, here is a link to the wonderful blog The Book Bar, who have very kindly published an article I wrote about my experience at The Debut last year.

As one of The Unpublished Writers Jam, I was one of 14 to get the chance to read out a section of my  work in front of an audience and a panel of experts. Until that point, I was terrified of any kind of public speaking and had never done a reading in my life.

Suffice to say, the tale ends happily as I am transformed from a nervous terrified, unpublished writer with a deep fear of public speaking into a terrified unpublished writer with a fear of public speaking and a deep and lasting love for The Debut Author's Festival.

Honestly people, if you can - go along. It is a great small festival with lots of interesting and imaginative events and is particularly supportive of new and emerging writers. There is a link to the left on this page if you want to check it the programme this year. Hope to see you there!