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This won’t be an erudite blog – it’ll probably be more of a venting of current angst – but hopefully it might be helpful to anyone else involved in what I call para-writing ie. all the work that writers do that has something to do with writing but isn’t actually the thing itself! I love it – I’m not someone who wants to write all day, everyday – but it certainly has its moments.
So – the history. For the last three summers I have run a 3 day creative writing course for adults, with the aim of publishing an anthology of their work. The first year we published ‘Banbury Stories’, the second year we published ‘New Stories for Old’ and this year we are still hoping to publish ‘Oxfordshire Originals’.
This year, one of the students approached me to explain that he was a small publisher himself. He publishes directories. He knows the process and thought he could do a better job than could be done through Lulu. He was interested in the idea of us forming a sort of co-operative. We would all agree to buy 7 books but would not contribute anything else to the cost of publication and he would aim to promote the book commercially. He thought he could cover his expenses and even make a small profit for us all. For him it was an experiment in publishing something more creative, he explained – and the group would get their work published to a higher specification at little extra cost. He hoped, if it was a success, to publish further anthologies of Oxfordshire Originals on the same basis – not quite vanity publishing but heading in that direction.
I am not a risk-taker on the whole, but on this occasion I thought it was worth a shot. The student seemed to know what he was doing and be very genuine and I still believe that he is. I agreed to be the editor of his version of the anthology as an experiment. Unfortunately, I don’t think he had enough awareness of how time-consuming editing is and we have, I think, had a misunderstanding about what was meant by ‘the stories are to be ready by the end of November’. To cut a long story short, despite my best efforts and protestations, he has gone to press with a book which has far too many minor errors in it for my liking.
I explained my discomfort and asked him to get in touch with his printer urgently to delay the print-run but he has refused and instead is threatening to abort the whole project . I therefore emailed the contributors to ask if they would prefer to go ahead or for me to do my usual Lulu version after Christmas and I’m waiting for the verdict. So far, its 2 all! Meanwhile, the student has emailed the contributors, telling them that I’ve lost faith in the project (untrue) and offering them a different deal which really is vanity publishing.
Deep sigh. What do I learn from this apart from not to take risks?
1. Not all publishing is done to the same high standards of editing! Clearly certain directories are not!
2. Just because someone is a publisher, he/she won’t necessarily know how long the process of editing fiction takes.
3. We are vulnerable. I feel my goodwill has been taken advantage of here. I have put more time into this than if I had been creating my own publication, all unpaid, but am not being treated as an equal partner in the process. I may be being paranoid but I think there are people out there who see publishing as a way to make a quick buck because other people are so keen to be published. That makes writers who also work as creative writing teachers vulnerable and also their students.
4. Some people don’t care about perfection – they just want something published. Others care

What do you think of when you think of a creative writing tutor? I summon the figure of an older woman with wild hair and a ‘sensitive’ nature and come up with Margaret Rutherford’s medium in Blythe Spirit. I try again and produce Emma Thompson as Professor Trelawney, in short, faced with the words ‘creative writing tutor’ I rather fear that my imagination supplies an image of a charlatan. Oh dear.
You see I now teach creative writing and I don’t believe that I am a charlatan. I may be heading in a Professor Trelawney direction sartorially, but I’ve got it under control. However, if responses to my new career are anything to go by, I am not the only one whose first instinct is to mistrust the very idea that creative writing is teachable. Those who write already are suspicious - I mean we all just write don’t we? We read lots of books and liked them so much we started writing them for ourselves - what is there to teach?
Rather a lot as it turns out.
‘Ah but you can’t teach talent,’ as several people have said rather sniffily. I think that is probably true, but you can encourage, stimulate, challenge and direct it. Most people have a spark of it and it is kindled by enthusiasm, by the opportunity to work with people who take writing seriously. Where can you get helpful feedback on a mss if not from my peers and teachers? Agents and commissioning editors rarely have time these days. Who cares enough to discuss whether something works better in first person or third but those selfsame teachers and peers?
It struck me recently that we treat writing as something quite unlike the other arts. There is nothing strange about being taught to dance, or draw or sing and yet people (often the same people who send their children off to tap and modern, piano and Saturday art classes) find it very odd that people should be taught to write. Could it be because people think it is easy? That yes indeed anyone can just write a book and it will be a good one? Maybe.
I fear I have fallen into the same trap. I used to believe that nobody taught me to write, which is of course ridiculous hubris. Back in the day I was encouraged to write all the time, story writing was an essential part of the curriculum. I wrote stories every day for years not just in primary school but at least until I was sixteen. Teachers read my stories out in class. I was taken seriously and I was encouraged, stimulated, challenged and directed.
I don’t know that many young people get that kind of teaching these days. I don’t know that creativity is valued as it should be.
I do know that the undergraduates and graduates I work with have things that they can learn and those things are, by and large, things that I can teach them. I must say I love it.
It is a cliche to say how much I’ve learned too, but it is true. I think the most significant revelation has been how little I have valued the part my own teachers played in fostering my creativity and taking my writing seriously. So it’s a bit late and some of them are probably dead - but thanks all of you! I would never have become a writer without you.

I've been leading creative writing workshops at the Brandywine YMCA on and off since 2002. My first crop of writers boasts one soon-to-be-published MG author, the lovely and talented Cindy Callaghan, and another whose agent is currently shopping her humorous chick-lit myserty novel, and yet another who's agent hunting and still yet another who will be following the same path once she gets back to revising her YA manuscript (CK, I'm looking at you!).

Anyway, here are the details:

ADULT CREATIVE WRITING SERIES

THE WRITER'S TOOLBOX
Calling all closet writers! In this class, we'll talk about the fundamentals of fiction, as well as complete weekly exercises to get those creative juices flowing. Open to writers of all levels, including past students of this course, lead by award-winning young adult novelist and college instructor Lara Zeises. Class is limited to 12 students.

Session: 2/16/10 - 3/23/10
Day/Times: Tues 7:00-8:00 pm
Fees: Full Members $48 / Program Members + Public $54

FICTION WORKSHOP
Want to get intensive feedback on your short stories and novel excerpts? This companion course is for you! Members will be encouraged to submit 15 to 20 pages of fiction (no poetry, please) to the class for critique. We'll also talk about revision strategies and other topics for intermediate to advanced writers. Please have a work in progress before signing up; e-mail instructor Lara Zeises at [email protected] if you have any questions. Class is limited to 10 students.

Session: 2/16/10 - 3/23/10
Day/Times: Tues 8:00-9:00 pm
Fees: Full Members $48 / Program Members + Public $54

COMBINATION WRITER'S TOOLBOX/FICTION WORKSHOP PACKAGE
If you're interested in signing up for both adult creative writing courses, please register for the combination package under code [04508]

Fees: Full Members $72 / Program Members + Public $80

You can access the Brandywine YMCA's online catalog here: http://www.ymcade.org/branches/brandywine/programs.cfm. Let me know if you have any questions!

This past weekend, I revisited Francine Prose’s craft book, Reading Like a Writer. She posed the question: Can Creative Writing Be Taught?

You can ask 10 different people and probably get different answers. I always answer with that dreaded phrase: “It depends.”

When I first starting writing, I really didn’t know anything about the craft and structure of writing. I just wanted to tell a story. So for me, going to writing classes and finding my writer mentor really helped me. I learned a lot things about writing fiction in a classroom setting.

But Francine Prose also makes a distinction of writers being taught in classes:

“Because if what people mean is: Can the love of language be taught? Can a gift for storytelling be taught? then the answer is no.”

I believe this as well. My thought is that you don’t take a one-day seminar or a six-week class and then go write a novel and get it published. It could happen but I think the people who can do this are already gifted storytellers.

Francine Prose also shares how she learned to write:

“In the ongoing process of becoming a writer, I read and re-read the authors I most loved. I read for pleasure, first, but also more analytically, conscious of style, of diction, of how sentences were formed and information was being conveyed, how the writer was structuring a plot, creating characters, employing detail and dialogue.”

To develop as a good writer, I believe that you first must become a good reader. It never ceases to amaze me how many people want to be writers but never read anything. You have to READ. And not only read, but read CLOSELY.

I have started to read closely in the last few years and it has opened up a whole new world for me. It was like I had been living in the Matrix, took the red pill, and then saw the meaning and structure of words in front of my eyes. It was an “a-ha” moment. Before, I read a book and loved it but now when I love a book, I figure out WHY I love it so much. I read it carefully — maybe several times. It has for me been the best teacher.

I think creative writing classes definitely can provide a foundation. Especially if you’re unclear about the mechanics of writing. Craft books can also be a great start for independent study. But if you’re serious about writing, you also have to be serious about reading.

When I was a child, our house was littered with drawings, on used, opened-out envelopes, or old wallpaper, and even drawing-pads. My brother drew dinosaurs or battles (and battling dinosaurs), my sister drew swimming seals or people, and my father's drawings were usually of aeroplanes or birds.

They all had one thing in common: there would be repeated attempts at the drawings. My Dad, for instance, would do a sketch of the whole plane, and then, underneath, another drawing of its undercarriage, and another of its wings. He hadn't been happy with the first drawing, so he practiced the bits he felt needed improving. Turn the paper over, and there would be another, larger, better drawing of the whole plane.

These sketches taught me something without my ever realising I'd learned anything at all - 'You won't get things right the first time, so repeat them until you do'.

My own drawings were usually of people. As a child, I drew far more than I wrote; in my early teens, I drew and wrote about equally. After my first book was accepted, when I was sixteen, writing took over from drawing (and I haven't seriously drawn anything for about thirty years now). But the lesson that I never knew I'd learned moved with me from drawing to writing. If I wasn't happy with something I'd written, I rewrote it – and if I still wasn't happy, I rewrote it again, and again, many times if need be, until I thought I couldn't improve it any more.

I didn't think I was doing anything noteworthy. Rewriting was part and parcel of writing. It was just what you did; as much a part of writing as using a pen.

Years passed, and, in the way of impoverished writers, I started teaching Creative Writing. But between you and me, gentle reader, I was puzzled as to what 'Creative Writing' was exactly. And even more puzzled as to what I could teach my students. If I had ever stopped to think about what I did when I wrote a book, I couldn't remember doing it.

I consulted a few 'How to Write' books, to find out what those authors told their students, and it was enlightening. “Oh, I do that! Who'd have thought it?” I resolved only to steal those 'creative writing' tips that I could honestly say I used myself. (So you'll hear only a perfunctory mention in my classes about keeping notebooks, or meditating, or doing ten minutes of 'automatic writing' every morning.) My classes were about setting scenes, writing dialogue, building plots. It never occurred to me to tell anyone to rewrite, because to me rewriting was writing. I didn't think anyone would need to be told that.

Slowly, over weeks, it became apparent to me that the idea of rewriting had never, ever occurred to many – not just a few, but many – of my students. A lot of them seemed to think it was cheating. A real writer, they seemed to think – Thomas Hardy, let's say – just sat down and wrote Tess of the D'Urbervilles straight off, from beginning to end, never blotting a word; and then he packed it off to his publishers who printed it without asking for a single change. That's the kind of genius he was. That's the way a real writer works.

If my students wrote a story, and found themselves dissatisfied with it, they concluded that it was another failure, put it away, and tried to forget about it. The next thing they wrote, that might be perfect.

“Couldn't you,” I suggested nervously, not at all sure I was on firm ground here, “couldn't you rewrite it?”

They were astonished. But they'd finished it! And it wasn't any good. What was the point of wasting more time on it?

“But nothing I've ever written,” I said, “was much good in its first draft. But if I like the idea – if there are bits that are good – I rewrite it, and improve it. I've rewritten some things dozens of times over. I rewrote the whole of GHOST DRUM six or seven times, and I rewrote the ending many more times than that.”

Some of the class were quite excited by this revolutionary idea. Others were as plainly horrified, reminding me of a little girl in Year 4 of a school I once visited. Her story was so good, I told her, that she should rewrite it. The look she gave me would have reduced a lesser writer to a pair of smouldering boots.

But having belatedly realised that rewriting was actually a tool of the writer's trade that I'd never before suspected I was using, I became evangelistic about it. “Rewrite!” I cried to each new intake of students. “You must rewrite!”

And then one of my students stopped me in my tracks by asking, “But how do I know what parts I have to rewrite? How do I know which words I should change?”

Well – er – quite. Obviously, these are the technical complexities Jordan was referring to when she spoke of her ghost writer 'putting it into book words'. When a writer, like wot I am, takes the raw first draft and puts it into book words, what exactly is it I are doing?

I hadn't a clue. Look, I only write the stuff – I don't waste my time thinking about it, any more than a ditch-digger thinks much about ditch-digging. She just heaves another shovel-ful of mud.

But there were my students, waiting for an answer. So I gave thinking about it a try. And boy, did my brain hurt...

To be continued....