Craft Chat Article about Creative Writing Classes

[Katie-Ellen]

Guardian Article: So You Want To Be A Writer

Culled via twitter.

I went to a creative writing evening class once, many years ago. Just once. The tutor was defensive, tetchy with half the group members, those with bits and pieces out there already, or already in the middle of novel projects, while the others had never yet written anything, or so they said, anxiously introducing themselves.

I never went back, and went to calligraphy classes instead, in consequence of which I can do a reasonable imitation of a monkish Lindisfarnian hand...before the Vikings raided.

But so many debut novelists now seem to be name-checking MA creative writing courses as their gateway to becoming published, should other writers be worried?

I don't care, I'm still not going on another one. And a cat may look at a king, but will the king look back at the cat? What do people think?

(This one is called Moth.)



Guardian Article: So You Want To Be A Writer

 

[Bluma Bezbroda]

Classes never worked for me. Waste of money: I turn off my attention after just few minutes Everything I do is sort of self-taught: languages, child-rearing (I'm the second child in a family of seven), now I'm slowly learning myself how to write. Even science, my primary occupation, can be put there—no class ever gave me what hours of mistakes in the lab did (nor prepared me for making/avoiding said mistakes).

Just for the record: I'm not gloating here. Actually, it's sort of a disability without which I could probably learn faster and achieve more. On the bright side, once I master a skill, I can be pretty darn good at it. And, when people come and ask me how come I'm so good with microscopes, I get to practice the phrase "Because I've managed to do everything wrong with them"

 

[Richard Turner]

I couldn't agree more with both Katie- Ellen and Bluma. Acting on advice from an editor I bought Gardner's "Art of Fiction". I got so irritated with him I couldn't finish it. How can a writer craft a real style of his or her own if following a rule-book? Apart from a couple of courses in carving and veneering, I too am self-taught at almost everything I have done. I used to think of it as a fault, but now realise I actually love the learning-by-doing process. At present I'm getting frustrated at learning how to get published by sending my sample material to agents. It has to be the slowest learning process ever invented. Unfortunately I now know I haven't got what it takes to do self-publicising so if I am to get published (an if so huge it blots out the light) I have to find someone to help me, and why would they want to help me if I haven't already made myself known to the public?

 

[Marc Joan]

It's painful, isn't it? I don't have an answer, I'm afraid. Marketing is everything, but how can one write, and do a day job, and etc, and then do the marketing too -- which frankly could be a full-time job in itself, even if one is good at it, which I'm not? Bring back the gatekeepers, I say - we were better off back then.

 

[Craig Thompson]

Creative writing classes are probably useful to someone who has never written anything and doesn't know how to get started. I'd probably consider Primary School to have been my own creative writing class, and I haven't considered anything in the intervening thirty years. All styles and subjects are possible (and probably both necessary and inevitable). As a first step, I'm not sure that there's any better advice than 'write what you feel' but it's not a ten week programme at £5 a pop.

 

[Bernard Stacey]

'Never speak ill of Society, Algernon, only people who can't get into it do that.'
Oscar Wilde

 

[Kitty]

I've also noticed this trend to do Creative Writing MAs. I think the main advantage is the contact with agents and publishers that these courses offer. I've never done one though. However I have attended some excellent writing workshops and would recommend doing something like that to anyone starting out. Writing is a craft and, like painting, we need to study and develop the skills and tools that we need. I do believe that we need to know and understand the 'rules' before we bend them.

 

[Carol Rose]

I've never done one and I just had my 88th book accepted. So yeah... not sure how useful they are in general.

Classes are only as good as the person teaching them, and it's been my observation that creative writing and similar classes, whether they are taught online, in person, by a well-known author (commercially successful), or by someone only a handful of people have ever heard of, tend to be biased toward that person's style of writing, the genre in which they write, whether they loathe a certain type of writing (genre fiction, for example), and a host of other subjective slants that affect what the members of the class get out of it, or don't get out of it.

I mean, let's face it. Unless you're teaching grammar and punctuation basics (which these types of classes assume you already know), any evaluation of your assignments is going to be subjective because there are no standards for what makes a "good" essay, a "good" poem, a "good" personal experience story, etc., etc., etc. Why, even right here on our very own site we've had people who have taken such classes feel they have made it as a gifted writer because of those classes, and who also felt they had a right to judge others' work because of having participated in them. I don't think so, and neither did a lot of people on here.

Personally, I don't think creative writing or any other writing classes can "make" you a good writer, if you don't already have the gift inside you. Think of it in terms of a musician. They aren't taught. They're born. They have the gift inside them. They can take classes to hone their skills and learn the basics of their craft (music theory, composition, etc.) but when they sit down at a keyboard, or pluck a guitar, or begin to write down notes, the gift they were born with shines through. Writers are the same way, IMHO. Yes, we need to learn our craft - spelling, grammar, punctuation - and it doesn't hurt to learn the mechanics of a story. But when a born writer bangs out a story - even without honing all those skills - the work has a spark to it, even when it's in a raw form. You can tell the person has a true gift. Once they hone their skills, the writing only gets better.

When I was in college, I dated a man who was a born musician. He would sit down at a piano and pluck out the parts of a song he'd written, hearing the way each instrument should sound together in his head. It was fascinating to watch. It's the same with me when I have a story I'm working on. The characters talk to me. I can write the story in my head, all day long, no matter what else is going on. I didn't learn that in a class. I could never learn that in a class because you can't teach that to someone. It's always been there, inside of me. All classes did were teach me the fundamentals and the basics. And to be perfectly honest, I learn more from edits and from reading others' work than I ever learned in high school or college English classes. Just like a musician has to practice, practice, practice to get even better, writers need to write to get better at it. But without the basic skill set there to begin with, nothing is going to happen beyond a certain point.

I don't have a lot of musical ability. Some, but not much. No matter how much I practiced, or how many books I read on music, I would only get so good because that's not a gift I was born with. And to be honest about something else, I've read some books and stories by people who believe that because they did an online course or took a few creative writing classes, they are a gifted writer. Not always so. Only my opinion, of course, but I wasn't moved at all. I think they wasted their money to be perfectly blunt.

So yeah. By all means, if you feel you might get something out of a class, take it. But don't go into it expecting to be made into a best selling writer if you're struggling with the process, or struggling to get things published, or aren't getting any positive feedback from professionals - agents or publishers - about work you're submitting. The classes probably aren't going to help, beyond giving you a chance to write. And you can do that without spending money.

OTOH, if it's being given by an author whose work you admire, or by someone you would love to get critique from, then it might be useful for you to take the class. But be judicious and approach any of them with caution. A lot of them promise things they can't possibly deliver.

 

[Bernard Stacey]

I just had my 88th book accepted

Please say you have a massive party planned when you reach the hundred?

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Carol Rose is amazing, a star in her firmament and a captain of writing industry So is it about sour grapes, then, as per the Oscar Wilde quote? A valid question. Could be, but all one has to do is decide to go along and pay, hoping thereby to learn something new, and also get 'the ticket in' to join that society, so if one doesn't, what are the reasons, if not monetary considerations, for not doing so?

After all, writing is a craft, which pre-supposes tools and techniques, which pre-supposes training and rigour, as with painting and so many other things. Maybe it comes down to the essential solitariness of any writer. Maybe it is stubbornness, necessary to maintain, assuming the writer has done their own apprenticeship, and has been a reader first; if they have not been in the habit of reading, could a class make up for that gap? Maybe it is to do with the unknown quantity, the quality of the teacher, so that, rather than 'factory farming' with a view to what sells now, 'this is how to do it'....they are able to facilitate each student in developing their own approach or style.

Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist and The Muse: ''Someone once said to me, and we argued it - ‘it should be enough for you to write the novel and put it in a drawer.’ They were trying to encourage me to find a true dignity amid the most likely outcome of rejection. Write, because of writing. I knew that if The Miniaturist didn’t go anywhere I’d write another, and another. Sounds easy to say, but writing was an oasis for me in the cultural drought of my other creative life. An oasis where I’ll admit the water sometimes tasted sour.
The decision to write has to be the most important element of this whole shebang. Writing will sometimes shatter you, but no one made you do it.''

http://jessieburton.co.uk/the-minia...essieburton.co.uk/the-miniaturist/dear-juliet

 

[Carol Rose]

Um, thanks for the compliment. I really don't think of myself as amazing or a captain of the writing industry. I simply got lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and that was after I spent ten years learning my craft and honing my skills. I also figured out, after much trial and error, what romance readers want, at least in my little corner of that great big genre. But it's a bit restrictive in this tiny place. You can't stray too far or they won't follow you. It's my choice to keep doing this, because the stories are inside me and I love writing them. But I could just as easily wake up one day and be done with it. My muse is fleeting and tempermental, as she showed me this past year when I literally didn't write anything for almost three months, and was perfectly fine with that.

As to the classes, I'm simply saying I don't believe any classes out there can teach me to write better, write differently, or that they can bestow some great mystery on me that I haven't already figured out on my own. I'm also reluctant to spend hard-earned money to take them because I know from personal experience that they are slanted toward the likes and dislikes of the person teaching them, as I would fully expect them to be.

The only reason I might take one some day would be to receive critique from someone whose work I admire, or whose opinion I trust. And the material I'd write for the class would be outside the romance genre. I do dream of spreading my writing wings. When I have time some day (HA! HA!) to pursue such a luxury, I likely will go for it. Once I find the right teacher, of course.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

....slanted toward the likes and dislikes of the person teaching them, as I would fully expect them to be.

That's the ultimate drawback, as I see it.

 

[Emurelda]

@Carol Rose I always learn so much from your posts. They're a wonderful balance of both humbleness and great personal insightful experience. A rare quality indeed. Xxx

 

[Carol Rose]

I came across this just now and thought it might prove useful to this discussion. Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time on Facebook knows the ads in the sidebar are targeted toward what you write in the posts, and the class that James Patterson offers online kept popping up in mine, so I looked around for reviews by authors who took it. Here are a few of those. I found it interesting they mirror many of the things we've been talking about in this thread.

Review of James Patterson’s Writing Masterclass

An Accomplished Writer Takes a ‘MasterClass’ From a Gargantuan Selling Writer

Novel Publicity – At the Feet of the Master: A Review of James Patterson’s MasterClass on Writing

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Three happy reviewers...and I did buy and read On Writing, by Stephen King. Which is a way of going to class.
I am a reader of his, even if in my opinion, he sometimes doesn't stop his stories when he needs to.

Another book which kept me company throughout yet another a re-drafting of the first 'drawer novel' was How To READ a Novel.

That's right. Not how to write it. How to read it. What do you mean, how to READ a novel, thought I.... this author is surely taking the...p...

But no.

 

[Carol Rose]

Three happy reviewers...and I did buy and read On Writing, by Stephen King. Which is a way of going to class.
I am a reader of his, even if in my opinion, he sometimes doesn't stop his stories when he needs to.

Another book which kept me company throughout yet another a re-drating of the first 'drawer novel' was How To READ a Novel.

That's right. Not how to write it. How to read it. What do you mean, how to READ a novel, thought I.... this author is surely taking the...p...

But no.

I have On Writing as well, which I return to again and again. So useful and easy to read. I've been a huge Stephen King fan since The Shining was published.

 

[Boopadoo]

I also refer to On Writing as my "masterclass" resource, along with Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing.

I've never attended an "official" class, either (at least not since high school English), but I have too admit this:

Since I first joined the old Litopia in 2009, between the forums, the houses, and all the writing friends and contacts I've made as a result, I've learned more about how to write well and with confidence in my skills and talents than any class could possibly provide (that includes Carol Rose from waaaayyyyyy back!).

I'm just sayin'...

 

[Marc Joan]

[QUOTE=" The tutor was defensive, tetchy with half the group members, [/QUOTE]

Classic sign of someone who doesn't know what they're talking about; good teachers are usually kind, or at least patient. If people are paying money, they deserve better. That said, I'd be highly unlikely to pay for a writing course, not because I wouldn't learn anything [I probably would] but because I am incredibly bad at taking in information, or even behaving like a human being, in a 'classroom' type context. On the other hand, it might be fun to recapitaulate my schoolday excesses...

 

[AgentPete]

Hello @Katie-Ellen,

We are changing the status of this ticket to closed as we have not heard back from you in 7 days.