In defence of writing courses

Last week I finished RMIT's Professional Writing and Editing diploma. I did it full time for two years in 2007 and 2008, and part time for 2009. During this time I worked on six novels, finished one and plan to finish three of the other five; many short stories; countless essays and articles; been paid to freelance; had many reviews published; expanded my reading comfort zones in many directions; interned with a publishing house; worked in publishing for two years come February; and got an agent. I also Found My Niche, which is perhaps the most important thing of all. Oh, and I started this blog. I also inspired my mother, who also loves to write, to sign up for a similar course, and I take credit for my father beginning to write a sci-fi novel. Now if only he'd finish it. (Of course, to their faces I hollered "Get out of my goddamn niche! Find your own hobby!" Terrible, ungrateful child that I am.)

My writing credits before I started the course were a lot of academic essays and reports, a failed Mills & Boon, several abortive attempts at novels, a handful of short stories and some fan-fiction, lost out there on the great swamp of words that is the internet, never to surface again. I hope. I was also a waitress and depressed at the idea that an Honours in Psychology would lead me to a life working with stroke and car-crash victims. As an undergrad, behavioural neuropsych sounded fabulous, until last semester rolled around and Reality Set In. What? You mean I won't be sitting in a cozy lecture theatre forever more? I'll be in a clinic? No thank you!

If I hadn't completed this course, I wouldn't be here today. I don't mean I'd be dead. I mean writing this blog. I also wouldn't have the job I do and I seriously doubt I'd have an agent.

My writing before I started this course? Pretty atrocious. I could string sentences together and write an interesting scene or two, but I had no idea how to revise or edit or plot, or the million other little things that are important when writing novel-length fiction. I had this weird idea that once I'd written something down it was as good as set in stone; that if it didn't come out brilliant the first time, it was always going to be rubbish.

But worst of all, I was afraid. Afraid of people reading my work. Afraid of anyone even knowing I was writing. A key part of the course, especially the novel writing subjects, is work-shopping: reading out your thousand words or so to the twenty other people in class and then having them critique it. On paper and out loud. The first time I work-shopped I was a wreck. Even the act itself was an eye-opener: passages that seemed like Shakespeare only the night before turned to drivel before my eyes as I read them aloud. The pages came back with adverbs circled, clumsy metaphors questioned, passages dotted with question marks and tactful "I can see what you're trying for here, but..."

I went home and I rewrote. And I came back to class a few weeks later with something about a million times better. By the end of the year I had twenty thousand words of a novel that had petered out into nothing, but they were good words and I was proud of them. I still remember fondly the day I made everyone fall about with laughter at something I'd written. It was the first time that had happened, and it's just the best feeling.

Now, after three years of critiquing and being critiqued, I am well on my way to what I believe is the Holy Grail of writing: being able to put into words exactly what I set out to say. This is my litmus test when I write: is this what I intended? Is this how things look and feel when I see them in my head? I'm still working on this skill and sometimes my characters go off and do things seemingly of their own accord--but when they do this I'm pleased to find that they are right and I am wrong; they sound pissed off because they are pissed off, and not ready to get on that horse or go to sleep or forgive their best friend thankyouverymuch.

Along with critiquing my own work I got to critique others. This is an invaluable experience. When you read novels you're reading the end product of years of work. Mistakes and inconsistencies (hopefully) have been ironed out, and there's only so much you can learn from them. Being able to pin-point why something isn't working is invaluable, and is best learned by reading other people's unpolished work. It also teaches you tact and respect, and how much work the unsung heroes of the writing world--editors--actually do.

There were all sorts of other skills, contacts and opportunities I gleaned during my years at RMIT, but these are the most important. Especially losing my fear. It was worth it just for that.

But then there are the cons. I learned so much from the lovely people in my course, but not all of them were as lovely as I could have hoped. Some were pretentious. Some were loud. And some were downright crazy. You can't choose who is in your class, and you're stuck with them for a whole year. Worst of all, the pretentious, loud, crazy people give advice along with the forthright, calm, sane ones. Sometimes they can be very persuasive. They can get into your head and make a mess of all the good things you've learned. And they're not immediately identifiable, these insidious creatures. But one way to spot them is to ask their opinion of one or two of your favourite writers, especially if you model yourself on them, and see how they react. If they spout a whole lot of crazy, feel free to politely ignore their advice for the rest of the year. Also, even your non-crazy classmates won't get what you're writing if they're not familiar with the genre. Weed them out too. This last year in Writing for Young Adults, the critiquers I trusted were reduced to about three individuals as everyone else read contemporary realism. The class was free of pretentious crazies, however, and everyone was loads of fun, which leads me to believe that people who write for children are far more palatable than those who don't.

In addition to the crazies, watch out for complacency. Once you're in a writing course it's easy to feel like the pressure's off: just being in class is enough. Your masterpiece will practically write itself. When I actually started to write everyday like I was supposed to, I realised how lazy I had been until then. Lazy and complacent.

Stephen King has a dig at writing courses in On Writing, especially at the crappy advice that comes out of work-shopping and the complacency they cause. But that's really a case of User Beware: if you're on your guard, you'll be impenetrable to bad advice. King didn't have a nice thing to say about these courses, which was a shame. I hope I've persuaded you otherwise if you were of a similar mind.

One more thing: In Australia we have creative writing courses at university and at TAFE. TAFE is perceived as the blue-collar, cheaper, inferior version of university, but don't be too swift to judge. TAFE is ideal for learning a trade, and writing is a trade.

Books for Writers (1): Stephen King's On Writing

There are a ton of books out there that give writing advice; some good, some bad and some awful. In this new feature, Books for Writers, I'll be reading a few of them so you don't have to (if they're awful) or pushing them on you like crazy if I think they're worthy of your time.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is, shocking as it is to admit, the first Stephen King book I've ever read. I know, take me out back and shoot me already. I blame a string of bad film adaptations (The Langoliers, for one. Oh, OH it's bad), and complete ignorance until recently that King wrote The Green Mile and The Shoreshank Redemption, two brilliant films. I knew he wrote The Shining but put down the awesomeness of it to Kubrick, not King.

I read this book on a recommendation from my boss. He teaches a publishing and editing degree and has shelves full of books in the office with austere titles like The Elements of Style and New Hart's Rules, so I was a little surprised to see him photocopying out of On Writing for a class one day. It was this page:

The timid fellow writes The meeting will be held at seven o'clock because that somehow says to him 'Put it this way and people will believe you really know.' Purge this quisling thought! Don't be a muggle! Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write The meeting's at seven. There, by God! Don't you feel better?

And I was hooked from then on.

The first half of On Writing is anecdotes from King's early life that he thinks accounts for the writer he became. I skipped over this as I wanted to get to the meat, which starts around page 113 in my edition, a chapter called What Writing Is. King draws analogies between what should be in a writer's mind and his uncle's formidable toolbox: vocab and grammar up top, elements of style underneath and so on. With grammar in particular, King takes things back to basics. What he relates is by no means Grammar 101 (you'll have to read another book for that--I'll let you know when I find one that doesn't make my gnaw my limbs off in despair) but he does talk about the basic parts of a sentence and what order to put the words--subject first, of course. ("The meeting's at seven!")

There's always some adverb-bashing to be had in books like this and King doesn't hesitate to put the boot in. Adverbs often end in -ly and are used to qualify verbs, like strangely and roughly. But he makes the point that not all adverbs are Satan's little helpers. I heartily agree. (There, now, that didn't hurt, did it?) Sometimes nothing but an adverb will do, and if Lharmell is published it will contain a smattering of adverbs. You have been warned! But each and every adverb (thanks to the vicious red circles on my pages made by my writing class peers) that I typed was accompanied by a flash of Pavlovian fear, half a second's consideration, followed by a swift deletion or rush of heady defiance. But the one time, King says, that adverbs should be shown the door are when you are writing speech tags, ie. "Never," she said firmly. I'm reluctant to use them in this case myself, but I recall that "Rodden said roughly" made it into my draft of The Harmings yesterday. It may be edited out. Further consideration is required.

What I like best about On Writing is the big-picture stuff: how King uncovers his stories, how he writes and how he feels about the craft. He likens the writing process to uncovering a fossil. A story is to be excavated, not plotted. Stories are discovered whole, in his opinion, but begin with a single spark, a What if? and as a writer it's your job to uncover it. He also believes that you should start with a situation, rather than a theme or character or so on. I'm not convinced that excavation is entirely different from plotting, but it's an interesting chapter.

King's not a great believer in writing courses. I can see his point but am inclined to be defensive. Two days ago I finished my three-year stint undertaking RMIT's Professional Writing and Editing diploma, and I am without a doubt a better writer, both in my method and my manner, for having done it. I want to explain how and why this is, and also the dark side of writing courses, but I'll save it for another post.

On Writing is an informative and cracking read. King's first and foremost an entertainer and I recommend this book to people who are interested in books in general, not just writers, and also for people who are interested in King himself. There are plenty of personal anecdotes, including a blow-by-blow account of what happened when he was hit by a van in 1999. His descriptions of his wife, his Ideal Reader (who he writes for) are very touching.

When I write scenes that strike me as funny I am also imagining my IR finding it funny. I love it when Tabby laughs out of control--she puts her hands up as if to say I surrender! and these big tears go rolling down her cheeks. I love it, that's all, fucking adore it.

My IR is a mix between me at fourteen and my partner. Especially the jokes. The jokes are all for him, and when he reads my pages I hover in the next room shouting "What bit was that?" every time he laughs. And he laughs in all the right places. It's a bit harder to access me at fourteen, but when I get that overwhelming sense of longing and wistfulness, usually accompanied by a voice in my head saying "That's soooooooo romantic", I know I've found her. She finds the oddest things romantic, like that scene in Hannibal when Lecter cuts his own hand off and not Clarice's when they're stuck in cuffs together. "Above the bone, or below?"

On Writing is highly recommended for everyone bookish.

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I'm taking Stephen King book recommendations. Please leave one in the comments! His dystopian/fantasy works preferably, not the horror/psychological ones. I really want to read Under the Dome, which was released here yesterday, but it feels all wrong to start with this end of his career.