Why not just go and hide in the hills in a cosy cottage and
pour your soul into your work? Why not painstakingly learn the craft in the evenings,
at weekends and even on holiday whilst you hold down the day job. Those serious
about it succeed in the end if they persist. It’s a big if, of course. The
serious writer had to learn to cope with rejection, to keep going when the
ideas run thin and to keep faith when the writing seems bad. It’s not easy. Those
who persist get there in the end. The writers who have taken this route are by
no means inferior to – nor indeed superior to those who choose to learn within the
academy.
Our undergraduates come to us largely unskilled. They mainly
have good A-levels, including something in English, sometimes English Language but more often English
Literature, some mature students and a very few young ones will have a portfolio
of writing and perhaps have completed an access course and most students will not
have done any creative writing since infant school. Masters students tend to
have either a BA in Creative Writing or portfolio of work, including some that
is published.
I have to admit to seeing a remarkable growth in our students
in their time with us. Even though they spend as much time as any student in
coffee and other bars they are probably still quite immersed in the writer’s
world. They have to read and write before each class. We give them plenty of
food for thought in the seminars. We offer them many suggestions about which books
they might read on the subject. Generally these books are much more than “How
To” manuals. They are much deeper.
We teach our students to reflect critically about their work.
That is probably the crucial point. The same rigour that must be used in
literary criticism has to be applied to how they look at their own work. Yes,
they must have some regard for craft. But they must also begin to become aware
of their own creative process and their own strengths and weaknesses. We
encourage a cycle of action research – experiment, evaluate, adjust, experiment
again. We teach our students to be robust, unafraid of criticism and gracious
about praise. They also learn how to identify what makes their text work or
not. Is it perhaps the rigour involved in all of this that puts them on such a
steep learning curve?
Whatever it that we’re doing right – and we’re still not
sure - the transformation that happens between level 4 Semester 1 and level 6
Semester 2 is immensely satisfying. Perhaps they already have that commitment
that makes them capable of coping with the big if.
I wonder why someone who has not written anything since infant school would decide to do a degree in creative writing? What a bizarre thing to do! It would be like choosing biology when you have never bothered to look at any animals, or engineering without ever riding a bike or taking something apart. How do people know it is what they want to do if they have never tried it?
ReplyDeleteJust curious....
There is not currently an A-level in Creative Writing. Little is taught beyond infant school. Often, as a visiting writer in schools, I teach a little creative writing and can’t understand why the students’ own teachers can’t / won’t but they don’t. I’m guessing curriculum doesn’t allow space. One of my colleagues and I regularly deliver CPD to school teachers or go into schools an teach directly to give students a flavour. They enjoy it, then come to uni for more. Some mature students have a portfolio and our mature students begin at about 23 / 24. We have a lot of “young” mature students. Or they write as a hobby. They have had no formal instruction in creative writing.
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