Creative Writing Courses
Gemma Peckham
October 19
A couple of weeks ago I attended a week long intensive creative writing course. Now, I understand that there are writers who balk at the thought of writers’ retreats, would eat nails before reading their work to a class full of aspiring writers, and prefer to practice their craft in a quiet room at home and keep it there, in neat, forgotten piles, never to see the light of day.
Some writers pluck up the courage to send their writing to journals, newspapers and publishers, because somehow it seems easier to let go of that envelope at the post box and forget about it than to actively engage in getting feedback about your work.
I am one of these introverted writers. Read my work to you? Aloud? Maybe another time. I would rather read my piece to myself over and over again until, in my mind, it is nothing more than a shopping list of ideas that I’ve managed to tenuously link on paper. My eyes are happy to linger on my favourite passages, and skip those that I know are weak and don’t know how to fix.
I will then begin to hate this particular piece of writing (which is probably not as loathsome as I have come to believe), edit and rewrite it until it has lost all semblance of its original self, and abandon it. Which is why I never finish anything.
And so it was that I entered this class. I sat at the back of the room and read my writing aloud, paper flapping about in my trembling hands. My voice defied biology and departed my body in a cross between a sick pigeon’s squawk and a malfunctioning robot’s cry for help. And then, the critique began.
So, from my observations of this excruciating moment, here are some things that you may come to realise upon reading your writing to others:
You have probably woven a perfectly formed subtext into your writing without ever having thought about one. Your classmates will point out that your protagonist’s obvious lack of self-worth and discomfort within his own home is perfectly portrayed through your description of his cold feet on wooden floorboards. And here you were thinking you’d just found a neat way of letting the reader know it was winter.
What you might think is a subtle allusion to something outside of the text itself is actually baffling for the average reader. You may realise that your readers aren’t necessarily equipped with the same set of cultural references that you are, and were not aware that NKOTB stands for New Kids on the Block.
Your idea of a fantastically poetic line might seem corny and insincere to others. And they will not hold back in telling you that ‘ethereal’ is their least favourite word in the history of words, ever, and that it makes them want to vomit.
Your least favourite section will be a brilliant, inspired passage of dazzling humour, grit and beauty. And you wrote it while you were sitting in a café pretending to be a moody writer so that attractive scholarly type with the macchiato would notice you.
Your classmates and teacher will help you to take your writing in the direction you want it to go, gently suggesting changes in a way that doesn’t rip your self esteem asunder. In fact, they may even believe that your writing is rather good.
So if you want to take your writing from the study to the studied, make sure you take everything on board. You certainly won’t agree with all of it, but you’ll learn more about your writing than you’d be able to see by yourself, and possibly come away with something that you’d be happy to circulate outside of your lounge room.
Update: Overland has also posted on this topic today.
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Comments
19 Oct 09 at 8:58
One of the reasons I like blogging is that it provides this kind of context for your work, feedback, without the necessity of spending a lot of time shut in a room with people you don't like.
...19 Oct 09 at 12:08
I'm one of those evil creative writing teachers who forces poor,
innocent first years into reading their work out. Mostly because I
know, as a writer, you're forced to talk about your work endlessly
- it's good practice to do it in a room full of peers who are all
equally as terrified as you are.
19 Oct 09 at 14:38
Blogging is definitely a good way to get useful feedback in a non-terrifying kind of way, without having to sit next to the beret-wearing guy who performs his work with the flourishes of interpretive dance.
I think there's something to be said, though, for the immediacy of the group forum. Dialogues can get started that might not happen in an online environment, and they can really inform your work. And yes, it's good practice!
...14 Nov 09 at 17:06
I would like to do a creative writing course to enable me to free up my writing skills instead of writing research material. Please email information preferably not as a blog.
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