How Much Writing Success Should Your Writing Tutor Have Had?

This was raised on another blog, and I thought it was an interesting question.  I don't have any answers, but these are my thoughts, in no particular order.

1.  I'm a better teacher now than when I started teaching, but it's not my personal writing success that's made me so, it's my experience as a creative writing teacher plus lots and lots and lots of thinking and reading about creative writing.

2.  When I started going to writing classes, I wanted someone who'd had some success with their writing.  I didn't have confidence in someone who hadn't achieved publication in some form.  I still feel that way, and cringe when I hear of someone teaching who hasn't actually been published (unless they've got other professional publishing experience, such as having been an editor).

3.  When I was on my MA some of the feedback the other students gave was excellent, some was not.  There was no correlation between the quality of the feedback and the student's previous success or experience.  However, those people who gave good feedback went on to have publishing success while those who didn't, didn't.

4.  There is publishing success and publishing success.  Self publishing a book, however you dress it up, means you have sidestepped the quality question.  I'm not saying all self published books are bad, just they haven't been through an external quality assessment process and backed by someone else's money.  I've seen people announce that they are published, when actually they mean self published, or published by a vanity press.  

5.  I am successfully published by most people's standards, but I could no more give useful advice on poetry than I could run a marathon.  If poetry was your thing, you'd do better with an unpublished but knowledgeable tutor than you would with published but ignorant me.

6.  I have high standards and want my students to set themselves high standards too.  Even if I'm teaching a leisure course I want them to work hard.  That's not for everyone.  Some people are happy for their writing to be way down their list of priorities, and that's fine - but I may not be the best person for them.

7.  Similarly, I'm not a great person for touchy-feely navel gazing, although I hope I'm sensitive to people's vulnerabilities and encouraging to the tentative.  Some tutors are touchy-feely and like navel gazing, and if that's what you want, why not? In other words, the personality of the tutor may be more important than their publishing history.

8.  If you were writing to go through a lot of personal stuff then you'd be better working with someone who has experience of this.  There are courses around of writing for therapeutic purposes, and there are people trained in this area.  Their experience would count far more than their publishing history.

9.  Some tutors are very sniffy about some forms of writing - I've heard of students on MA courses in particular having their work dismissed as not worthy, simply because of the genre they wanted to write in.  It would be more important to have someone as a tutor who was open to what you wanted to write but was perhaps not a super successful writer themselves, than someone who was a starry literary name, but dismissed your work and undermined your confidence.  

10.  Related to the above, you may be sniffy about what the tutor writes, in which case you won't have confidence in what they say.  You may be right, you may be wrong, but if you don't have confidence in them, they are the wrong tutor for you.

OK, so that's my thinking.  What do you reckon?

What I've Learned From Teaching

And after my grumpiness earlier in the week about a new term starting, I'm off this morning to teach the first session this term of my Friday class, the longest teaching job I've had - over ten years, who'd have thought it? Ever Friday morning (and afternoon, because the waiting list for the morning led a duplicate class in the afternoon) in term time for over ten years I've come up with a new class idea for thirty odd students to react to.

That's a lot of classes. A lot of ideas because I rarely duplicate a class unless asked to (or once because I came across a scribbled class note to myself and thought "that's a good idea, I'll use that in class", completely forgetting that I already had) and a lot of people putting their heads down and reacting to my commands to write something impossible.

And they do. I set these impossible tasks, they pull faces and then write something in response. They're so obedient! I hardly ever get a refusal, their creativity hitting a blank. There may be moans and groans, but they do it.

Usually when I call time they're less obedient. The pens scribble on. I call time again, and reluctantly people leave the world of their writing and come back to the class.

So, what do we learn?

Firstly, it doesn't take long to get sucked into writing. You just have to get started and it pulls you in.

Secondly, if you HAVE to - a new class looming means a new idea must be found, a teacher demands you write something - you will write.

We've been proving that every Friday for over ten years. We'll prove it again today. It's true for you too. Sit down, start writing, and in a few minutes it will come.

Why I Teach Creative Writing

At a tutorial in Oxford on Tuesday a student said as he was leaving, I can't understand why someone like you, a successful novelist, teaches. I mumbled something about enjoying it, but he didn't look convinced. So, Mick, this is for you. It's what I should have said.

Life isn't about money - heck, if that was what interested me, being a novelist would be a daft choice. We all need money to live on, but after a certain point, it's about consumerism. I don't care about going on flashy holidays or having a smart car. I have no interest in designer labels or eating in the best restaurants or living in a big house.

What I'm interested in is writing and reading, and talking about writing and reading, and being with people who like writing and reading. I like the mechanics of writing - why does X work, and why doesn't Y? I like doing things like crosswords and sudoku and story analysis feels pretty much the same to me. I like playing around with structure and character, I like seeing the patterns fall into place. Teaching is an outlet for that. I come up with exercises for students that examine the mechanics of writing, they do them, and then we discuss the success or otherwise. It's endlessly fascinating.

I also get a lot out of the students. There's nothing better than seeing someone improve - I was reading some student work yesterday that had been revised and was so excited, she'd absolutely nailed the story. It's so satisfying when that happens. And the students I teach are usually alert and interested and want to improve and nearly as obsessed by writing as I am. (This is why I don't teach British undergrads any more because they usually aren't.) Classes are energising and uplifting. And occasionally there's the adrenalin rush of feeling you're out lion taming, although that happens less and less as I get more experienced.

And then there are practical considerations. I'm published today, I may not be tomorrow. Publishing changes, writers go out of fashion, get blocked. Teaching provides some stability in an uncertain world. It also gets me out of the house and away from the computer and into the real world meeting a range of real people. Writers can become isolated: the job involves hours of sitting on your own in an imaginary world. It suits people who are introverted and not especially sociable. It suits me. I'm never happier than when I take a week out and go to an isolated cottage to write. Teaching forces me to be out there in the real world.

Some people like football. Some like choral singing. I like teaching. That's all.

Next event - CHESTERFIELD! 10th June, at the library at 7.30 as part of the Derbyshire Lit Fest. (Details on p 49 of the brochure). And then it's Birmingham on the 23rd.

Why I Teach

A new term is in the offing, and I can't think of a single thing I'm going to teach my class. So, it seems timely to remind myself why I teach...

* It gets me out of the house instead of being stuck indoors all the time.

* I get to meet new people who are generally interested and enthusiastic

about my favourite subject: writing.

* I get to talk about my favourite subject and, because I'm the teacher,

there are fewer interruptions and glazed eyes (so unlike home...).

* It provides structure to my week.

* I love seeing students growing in skill and confidence.

* I love hearing about student success.

* I love the support everyone generously offers other students.

* I generally like thinking up class exercises, and seeing how they work out.

* Thinking up stuff for class stimulates me to think about the craft of

writing.

* I'm a better writer because I've had to analyse what I do so I can teach it.

Right. I still don't know what I'm going to teach next Friday, but I've remembered why I'm going to be teaching whatever it is.

Writing for Writing's Sake

A few years ago I was on a walk with an artist friend who stopped to sketch the view. I sat down too, but instead of writing, I decided to draw the view too. I hadn’t done any drawing since school, but I really enjoyed myself and it was a pretty fine sketch, though I say it myself. My artist friend was very polite, made a few kind comments about the charmingly naïve perspective and interesting use of shading and offered some suggestions which, should I ever sketch a view again, I fully intend to use. It was a good day.

It never occurred to me that success as an artist was determined by my ability to sell my work in the market place. Success was about my enjoyment in the process, and satisfaction with the end result, however much the perspective was all over the place. So when people ask me, as a creative writing teacher and novelist, if I think you can teach someone to write, I never know what to say. What are they really asking? Can you teach someone craft techniques so their skill improves? Yes. Can you stretch and challenge their abilities in an enjoyable way? Definitely. Can you make them a published author? No – you can only give them some tools to help them along the way.

I don't think using market place success is the right way to judge creative writing teaching. What makes a published writer is a big combination of elements - determination, persistence, talent, luck, skill, hard work, imagination... You can't teach "it" but no one knows what "it" is. What you can do is give a leg up to the talented, improve the untalented and generally develop skills and have a lot of fun doing it. I'm thrilled to bits when one of my students gets a book published or wins a short story competition but ultimately publication isn't what I'm teaching. For myself, I wanted to be published, as an endorsement of what I was doing, but going to creative writing classes was always about the enjoyment of the process. It still is.