ON COURSE
Writing Course Establishments
The major occupational hazard faced by writers, apart from the difficulty of earning money, is loneliness. Not the tortured-artist-in-garret kind of loneliness, but isolation due to the solitary nature of the activity and the space between author and reader. Playwrights work with directors, performers can gauge an audience's response, artists (who face similar difficulties) will often have been to art college and can at least attend their own exhibitions.
But if you're a writer, a relative beginner, with no experience, publisher or agent, to whom can you turn for advice? Friends and family will gladly give approval and encouragement, but they can rarely explain why manuscripts are returned, or suggest how a piece might be rewritten. One solution is to attend a creative writing course. No two courses will be the same, and naturally a lot depends on the tutor, but to my mind a good course will combine technical criticism and feedback, practical advice, discussion and exercises.
'Exercises' reminds one of schooldays. My experience, as both participant and as a tutor, of being told to sit down and write, say, a dialogue of two people arguing about money, and then, after an hour read it out, is both more frightening and more rewarding than any lesson. You sit with blank paper and mind for a minute ... two minutes ... three. You sweat. Then a phrase comes, then the character who speaks it, then the other, then the reason for their argument. Suddenly the argument becomes a symptom of their failing marriage, or you've put them in the future holidaying on Venus, or you've got a satire on materialism. Your mind doesn't think "I can do that". Somehow, under pressure, imagination is unlocked, and ideas arrive. I emphasise this because this process of confidence-building can be the most exciting and useful potential of creative writing courses. You are challenged to write dialogue, which you didn't think you were good at, and you find that you are. So maybe you can write humorously too, or go surreal, or narrate from the point of view of a geriatric or a child.
Then you'll read out something you've just written. Your strengths and weaknesses will be undisguised. The tutor and others can point out what needs changing on a rewrite, and what must not be lost. That people on a course will informally compare notes and give feedback and encouragement goes without saying, so does the tutor's availability to advise on publication, getting down to work, researching and so on. Most tutors will read a finished piece you've brought, as long as it's not a novel, and preferably not handwritten.
What's also important is discussion of such things as personal motivation. Do you write to entertain, to inform, to earn money, to throw back the barriers to a reader's perception, or just to get rid of those infernal plots that keep oozing into your brain? All these are respectable, and all have implications for the way you approach your writing. Yet they may be confusing, even contradictory, and not necessarily understood by non-writers. A course offers a rare chance to explore the art-for-art's-sake or money-for-God's sake conundrum, for instance, or to discuss whether any writing can be apolitical, or to talk about whether, given your aims, you should let your imagination fly or follow the 'write about what you know' rule.
Some people might avoid courses for fear they'd be constricted by such 'rules of writing'. Well, rules they're not, nor are they constricting. They are principles, and understanding them helps a writer gain control over what he or she is doing, to be more convincing, confident and versatile. I wouldn't recommend a course to someone who hadn't attempted at least a small amount of writing, a course is best seen as part of an apprenticeship. It's a good idea to back it up, before and after, by reading a couple of books about writing. I'd recommend 'Word Power: A Guide To Creative Writing' by Julian Birkett, 'Writing Fiction' by Garry Disher on technique and the classic 'Becoming A Writer' by Dorothea Brande on getting the imagination to work when on your own without a tutor to set impossible exercises.
If you get an opportunity, go, whether you're a hobbyist or an aspiring professional. You'll meet people of different ages and sexes, from varied backgrounds, all wanting to improve their writing, and there's every chance that there'll be someone with whom you can maintain contact. You'll have to return to your lonely writing desk, but you'll do so having gained knowledge, confidence and probably inspiration.
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