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MWF '11 Coverage: Writers and Their Craft

Rebecca Harkins-Cross September 09

One of the final events in Melbourne Writers Festival’s schools program,Writers and Their Craft asked authors Maile Meloy and Steven Amsterdam about the nuts and bolts of their practice. And while the discussion was geared towards the largely adolescent audience (Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming has recently been added to the VCE English syllabus), the authors’ advice was applicable to wannabe wordsmiths and consummate penmen alike. Hearteningly, about three quarters of the crowd raised their hands when asked if they were aspiring writers – myself included.

Steven began writing short stories as a child, while Maile wrote reams of letters to people who were away. Both later embarked on creative writing classes, which they found beneficial (though not essential) in refining their craft. The process of workshopping, however, is something that they both stress is pivotal to becoming a better writer. Steven still meets weekly with a group from his postgraduate days.

But both authors were adamant that learning to write is essentially about practice – 10,000 hours to become an expert, if you want to get precise. As Maile emphasised, everything you produce will make you a better writer, including the bad stuff. The danger is letting self-consciousness inhibit you before you even put pen to page. Or fingers to keyboard. Sometimes you need to trick yourself that it’s good, Maile said, just so you can get something out.

In order to clock up these kinds of hours, allocating oneself daily writing time is essential. Steven relayed a story he’d heard at a previous writers festival of an author who got up each day at 5am, immediately retreating to their study with a cup of perfectly brewed green tea and a Radiohead record on the stereo. Here they would write without interruption, refusing to eat or talk to anyone, until they wrapped up their day’s work at 2pm. While Steven himself doesn’t adhere to such a rigid schedule, he insisted that each writer should work out when he or she writes best, and make sure they carve out this time accordingly.

Maile finds she works best when she first gets up – the closer she is to sleep and her subconscious, the more easily the words flow. But what she really insists on is discipline. She forces herself to sit in front of her computer for an allocated amount of time each day, whether the words are flowing or not. She quoted the ever-incisive Flannery O’Connor, who once said “If you’re here when it’s not working, you’ll be here when it’s working again”.

They both also insisted that giving your work time to breathe is crucial – let things sit for a while before returning to them, and you shall invariably see how to proceed more clearly. Interestingly, Maile said she often doesn’t know what her novels are about until after she’s completed a draft, after which she goes back and identifies key themes and concerns, and then embarks upon more research.

The concluding sentiments bestowed to budding authors were to give your writing time, to allow yourself to fail, to find an audience your can trust, and to read and read and read – not just fiction, but anything at all. Everything will make you a better writer.

And of course, both Steven and Maile insisted on internet abstinence during work hours, which seems to be mandatory practice for any writer of our age. Franzen said at one event that he has gone so far as to plug up his computer’s ethernet port with glue.

Maybe this is why I’m yet to write my 500+ page opus. I’ll start in a minute, just let me finish this last tweet…


 

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