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One of the things I have done today is think about what I might do with my creative writing class which meets once a month – haven’t quite decided yet but I have a vague idea and I’m looking forward to it. The class lasts for 2 hours and we always over-run.
A few years ago I would have vowed I would never teach creative writing. I would never be part of a writing group. What? Go back to English teaching after discovering the liberation of drama teaching? No way! Sit around listening to wannabes read their dire stuff and be part of a back-scratching circle that hasn’t got the guts to say please go away and take up crotchet instead? Gosh, I was arrogant! Now I love both the teaching and the listening, I have started another (very tiny) writing group for people who want to write their autobiographies (thank you, Leslie Wilson for that lovely idea) and I am awe-struck by the talent of some of the writers and their dedication. Not only that, I am humbled by being part of a group, the bedrock of which is people who will graciously accept criticism and apply it and also give it where necessary with gentleness and sensitivity.
So how did I get from there (arrogant and dismissive) to here? (impressed and humbled)
Like a lot of the bits of my work portfolio, this happened by chance. The creative writing tutor at The Mill Arts Centre where I run the Youth Theatre, resigned suddenly. There was a gap. You write books, don’t you Meg? You’re a qualified teacher? Could you possibly.....? That was nearly three years ago. In the intervening summers I’ve run 2 intensive 3 days workshops where a tiny group has written and self-published an anthology of their work via lovely (if clunky at times) www.lulu.com. (Incidentally, is it just me but has the P&P multiplied a hundred-fold?) And what a learning curve that has been! For me, a spin-off looks like a new publication with A&C Black but I’ve yet to sign the contract so I’m not holding my breath!
It’s not all awe and wonder, of course! One aspect I didn’t anticipate is that whilst members come and go, I have two members who have been with me from the start and two other long-standing members – and there’s an overlap between the creative writing group and the autobiography group – so each session has to be new and original. There’s no re-cycling of old lessons! The downside of this is that every so often it does my head in and panic ensues! I’m primarily a children’s fiction writer – so what gives me any qualification whatsoever to teach poetry, travel writing, crime fiction, etc etc etc? The upside is that I have to jolly well find out! And it is very interesting and good for me. Last time we were dwelling on an idea culled from the Myslexia short story competition that a satisfying story is one in which change takes place, preferably within an intriguing context. It turned out to be quite a contraversial idea and led to an interesting discussion, not to mention some very original story plans.
So what will Saturday’s class hold? I don’t know yet – but the hour we devote to reading and commenting on what the members have brought along will be fascinating. Some will have taken what we did last time and worked on that. Others have on-going projects and they’ll share the next bit. I’m really hoping Stewart will have written the next instalment of his Sci-Fi novel and that Rebecca’s children’s novel is as funny as last time. But the best bit for me will be John’s poetry. I am gradually making a collection of his stunning poems. I am very happy to write the stuff I write – fluent, readable, light, accessible. But I cannot help being envious of those

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....

Ha! This is a bit risky! Normally I write in word and then post on this blog - but today I'm posting late at night on a friend's computer because I'm away from home! So this might be brief through sheer fear - will this disappear at any moment?!

Now then...a quick scan of the keyword list suggests no one else has written about the glories of www.lulu.com here but apologies if they have and you're bored of reading about it! I'm sure you all know that Lulu is an on-line self-publishing company which an be used to create anything from a single copy of a small paperback booklet to an infinite number of case-bound illustrated tomes. I have recently had my first couple of flirtations with this entertaining plaything and I'm pleased to wax somewhat lyrical about it.

Last summer I ran a 3 day creative writing workshop for adults on the theme of Banbury Stories. We sought inspiration from Banbury museum and local history books and then got cracking. We weren't aiming to write hugely well-researched local history - instead we wrote fiction and poetry inspired by what we gleaned and had an immense amount of fun, all with the aim of publishing a small booklet that we would sell in the museum and the arts centre where we were based. The head of adult education had agreed to take over the publishing side, once I'd edited the ms. Lovely! Fantastic! We finished the project and were all thrilled. And then disaster struck. The H of AE became seriously ill. Suddenly, I had to find another publishing solution - and decided, having heard so much about it, to try Lulu.

Now I am a techniphobe. I was expecting hours of frustration, major headaches and serious bad temper. I therefore decided to go for the simplest type of publication possible - which as it turned out was just about all I could do with the small size of ms that I had! With much trepidation, I began, starting with the registration process you might expect. After that, I had to take a deep breath and dive in - I had to START A PROJECT! Believe me, this couldn't be simpler. Essentially, if you have your ms ready to go, all you do is select the size and style of book you want, upload your ms, click 'make print ready file', create your cover - and publish as many copies as you want! I had one or two minor problems but found the on-line chat excellent as a means of help (though that seems to be more restricted now than it was - probably far too popular!). I also needed to consult my resident media expert (18 year old son!)about the photo and lay-out I wanted for the cover, but apart from that it was astonishingly simple. I ordered one copy as a proof and discovered that, sure enough, my on-screen editing skills were dire - but as each copy was only costing me £1.61 plus p&p, I wasn't too bothered! My only real criticism is that the weight of the cover paper could do with being heavier as it is showing a tendency to coil and there is no choice about that for the simplest style of book - but we still have a very professional-looking little product and are almost ready to put in our order. A tragic footnote is that one of our writers (who unbeknown to us was fighting cancer) died on New Year's Day without seeing the finished result but the lovely thing about this type of publishing is that I can easily go back and include a dedication to her before publishing the copies we need.

I'm not about to plunge into publishing my novels this way - though people do and sell them through the Lulu marketplace and Amazon as well as themselves (I have a really excellent drama games book which appeared in my Amazon suggestions and turned out to be self-published through Lulu - so the system works!) - but for creative writing projects and personal use, it's brilliant. I've just created a single copy of a little book for a special present for a friend - and I'm thrilled with it. A member of the group I teach has created a fully illustrated picture book for a friend's new baby - it looks great! Lulu provides a (fairly restricted) gallery of front cover images (I used one for my friend's present) but it's relatively easy to use your own.

Enough? Want to have a go? I've dwelt on the practicalities here but there are wider issues of course. Thousands of people are publishing through Lulu and it's clear from the drama book I bought that there is excellent material 'making it' in this way, rather than through conventional publishing. Publishers beware! There is something very attractive about the autonomy of this - and the speed and the cost! I've just been granted funding to be a writer in residence in two local schools - and guess what I said I'd be doing with the children? So that will be my next Lulu project - but I'm rather tempted to have a go with one of those novels that I think ought to be out there but hasn't found a publisher! I've so very, very little to lose!