You Can Always Learn

Another session at the Romantic Novelists Association Conference. I was a bit thrown when the speaker opened her talk on first lines by saying 'I don't know what you're doing here, Sarah. You must know all this already.'

I mumbled something about there always being something to learn, which probably sounded a bit smarmy, but it's true! I think you'd have to be incredibly arrogant to believe you couldn't learn anything more about writing.

I've been writing fiction for ten years. I've over four hundred 'how to write' books on my bookshelf and I've read them all several times, plus others I've got from the library or been lent. All had something to offer. I love going to creative writing classes as a student. This year, apart from the RNA conference, I've done one week-long course and one day course, and I've got another booked for later on in the summer. What could be nicer?

That's what's so fascinating about creative writing - every day another aspect presents itself, every day you learn something new. And if the writing ever palls, if the imagination is exhausted, well, there are always some new crisp pages of someone else's book to slip into. Reading, writing, learning. Reading, writing, learning. My personal trinity.

At last! I've got my finger out and have committed to running some day courses:

Writing a Novel - 31st July in Bath and 18th September in Truro

Getting a Novel Published - 1st August in Bath and 19th September in Truro

Contact me on sarah@sarahduncan.co.uk for more info...

Writing for Writing's Sake

A few years ago I was on a walk with an artist friend who stopped to sketch the view. I sat down too, but instead of writing, I decided to draw the view too. I hadn’t done any drawing since school, but I really enjoyed myself and it was a pretty fine sketch, though I say it myself. My artist friend was very polite, made a few kind comments about the charmingly naïve perspective and interesting use of shading and offered some suggestions which, should I ever sketch a view again, I fully intend to use. It was a good day.

It never occurred to me that success as an artist was determined by my ability to sell my work in the market place. Success was about my enjoyment in the process, and satisfaction with the end result, however much the perspective was all over the place. So when people ask me, as a creative writing teacher and novelist, if I think you can teach someone to write, I never know what to say. What are they really asking? Can you teach someone craft techniques so their skill improves? Yes. Can you stretch and challenge their abilities in an enjoyable way? Definitely. Can you make them a published author? No – you can only give them some tools to help them along the way.

I don't think using market place success is the right way to judge creative writing teaching. What makes a published writer is a big combination of elements - determination, persistence, talent, luck, skill, hard work, imagination... You can't teach "it" but no one knows what "it" is. What you can do is give a leg up to the talented, improve the untalented and generally develop skills and have a lot of fun doing it. I'm thrilled to bits when one of my students gets a book published or wins a short story competition but ultimately publication isn't what I'm teaching. For myself, I wanted to be published, as an endorsement of what I was doing, but going to creative writing classes was always about the enjoyment of the process. It still is.

Ten Year On

I saw my first creative writing tutor in the supermarket yesterday, and realised that it's exactly ten years since I started writing. As a child my dream was to live in a house of books, with enough money to buy any book I fancied, and enough time to read it. Becoming a writer was something that only occurred to me much later. I made various unsuccessful attempts throughout my twenties, at best getting to Chapter 3 before giving up. I had ideas, but none of them could make the transition from my head to the page.

Then, many years later, I was trying to move to Bath. I'd enrolled my children in Bath schools but the house hadn't materialised, so I was driving them in, spending the day househunting, then driving back. But there weren't enough houses to fill a whole day of looking, so it seemed my opportunity to start writing. I went to class one morning a week and wrote the rest of the time. I can remember presenting my very first story. It was just over 400 words and I was thrilled and appalled. Thrilled because I'd actually finished something and it had a beginning, middle and an end, and appalled because it was only 400 words and I couldn't see how on earth I could make it longer.

The class was brilliant in giving me a focus. Each week I wrote and wrote and then listened to the feedback. I read even more and tried to copy what I saw real authors do. And gradually my stories became longer without me even trying, just because I was adding more depth, more detail. Ten years on I've written five novels and I now teach that same Friday morning class. But I always remember how difficult it seemed at the beginning, how impossible. It still seems impossible, to be honest. I just know that the answer is to write, and carry on writing.