Learning about Writing

When I was doing my MA I asked if we were going to have any talks on craft techniques.  'Oh no,' came the lofty answer.  'We assume that anyone on the course already knows that sort of thing.'

Well, I thought I didn't, but it effectively shut me up at the time.  Now I think, what utter nonsense.  Learning about writing is an on-going process.  There isn't a finite set of answers that you can work your way through, ticking boxes, and by the time you get to the end of the list that's it - bing! - you know it all.  

I'm always learning.  It's one of the things I like about writing.  There's always something new.  Every time I read a book, or go to a lecture or hear another writer speak I learn something.  Sometimes it's a new approach to something I already know.  Sometimes it's a reminder.  And sometimes it's something completely new to me.  I love it!  

An acquaintance recently asked me what I did apart from writing, what my hobbies were.  I felt very dull indeed when I said I didn't have any, I just read and wrote.  (I remembered afterwards I do Pilates, but too late to redeem my terminal dullness. And I go to the cinema a lot, but I usually analyse the scripts in a rather nerdy way so I think that counts as writing related too.)  Thing is, unlike the director of the MA, I think there's so much to learn about writing you could never learn everything.   But it's an awful lot of fun finding out. 

 

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.