Every so often a famous and highly gifted writer will round on creative writing courses, declaring them useless. Will Self had a dig a couple of years back. I rather enjoyed his notion that instead of doing a creative writing course you should do a shitty job that will give you something to write about. However as far as I am aware Self wasn't teaching creative writing at that point unlike this weeks contender Hanif Kureishi who runs such a course at Kingston.
His comments have been widely reported especially that creative writing courses are a waste of time. Seems an odd choice of things for him to say. Obviously when one digs deeper what he is saying is a little more nuanced than that. It is a long process becoming a writer, a weekend writing school is no substitute for that. That working with a writer/teacher over a period of time has value that doing a range of classes with different teachers does not. Fair comment. But where I primarily disagree is around the notion that teaching Creative Writing is somehow completely different from teaching anything else. Having taken a couple of creative writing modules through the OU my view is different.
Firstly not everyone studying creative writing expects to emerge ready to produce a work of breath taking genius. A woman in my group simply wanted to write her family history to pass on to her grandchildren. She wanted them to know about where they came from and thought if she wrote well they were more likely to read it and pass it on to their children.
Secondly I cannot think of any subject where the course defines whether somebody will be a huge success or not. Holding an MBA will not make one a captain of industry, a BSc will not in itself build bridges, and rockets and cure disease. No course can teach talent, or brilliance. If any student embarks on Kureishi's course believing that alone will make them a great writer then they deluding themselves. What the course should do is provide tools, ideas, provide an environment where informed feedback can be shared. That then enables the writer to grow into whatever they can be.
The difference between creative courses and then more vocational is an economic one. A graduate Engineer does not have to be the shining star to make a living. Having a qualification as a badge of competence is a big reason for taking that kind of course. I would hazard that compared to the general population those emerging from creative writing courses are very proficient, very competent. But no publisher, let alone any reader is going to be interested in the merely proficient poem or novel. This echoes another theme that Kureishi talks about. That even great writers struggle to make money, the ones that cannot tell a compelling story are bound to fail.
The Guardian rather naughtily compared Creative Writing teaching to a pyramid selling scheme. Each tier selling the dream to the one below. The difference, if you accept Kureishi's view, that even the guy at the top isn't making much of a living.
While this is not the provocative stuff of headlines, my view is that good creative writing courses help the students develop as writers in a way that showing your stuff to your mates will not. The result is that one will get to the position where you discover if you have the brilliance to truly shine more quickly and maybe with fewer blind alleys. Even if one is not brilliant they can be a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting creative experience, and as long as one has not starved or beggared oneself in the expectation of riches to come that might just be fine in itself.
His comments have been widely reported especially that creative writing courses are a waste of time. Seems an odd choice of things for him to say. Obviously when one digs deeper what he is saying is a little more nuanced than that. It is a long process becoming a writer, a weekend writing school is no substitute for that. That working with a writer/teacher over a period of time has value that doing a range of classes with different teachers does not. Fair comment. But where I primarily disagree is around the notion that teaching Creative Writing is somehow completely different from teaching anything else. Having taken a couple of creative writing modules through the OU my view is different.
Firstly not everyone studying creative writing expects to emerge ready to produce a work of breath taking genius. A woman in my group simply wanted to write her family history to pass on to her grandchildren. She wanted them to know about where they came from and thought if she wrote well they were more likely to read it and pass it on to their children.
Secondly I cannot think of any subject where the course defines whether somebody will be a huge success or not. Holding an MBA will not make one a captain of industry, a BSc will not in itself build bridges, and rockets and cure disease. No course can teach talent, or brilliance. If any student embarks on Kureishi's course believing that alone will make them a great writer then they deluding themselves. What the course should do is provide tools, ideas, provide an environment where informed feedback can be shared. That then enables the writer to grow into whatever they can be.
The difference between creative courses and then more vocational is an economic one. A graduate Engineer does not have to be the shining star to make a living. Having a qualification as a badge of competence is a big reason for taking that kind of course. I would hazard that compared to the general population those emerging from creative writing courses are very proficient, very competent. But no publisher, let alone any reader is going to be interested in the merely proficient poem or novel. This echoes another theme that Kureishi talks about. That even great writers struggle to make money, the ones that cannot tell a compelling story are bound to fail.
The Guardian rather naughtily compared Creative Writing teaching to a pyramid selling scheme. Each tier selling the dream to the one below. The difference, if you accept Kureishi's view, that even the guy at the top isn't making much of a living.
While this is not the provocative stuff of headlines, my view is that good creative writing courses help the students develop as writers in a way that showing your stuff to your mates will not. The result is that one will get to the position where you discover if you have the brilliance to truly shine more quickly and maybe with fewer blind alleys. Even if one is not brilliant they can be a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting creative experience, and as long as one has not starved or beggared oneself in the expectation of riches to come that might just be fine in itself.
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