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Can creative writing really be taught? Are the courses just churning out graduates that would be better off doing accountancy degrees? Novelist, journalist, creative writing tutor and non-fiction writer Maureen Freely talks about her own experiences of teaching creative writing in the UK.
Maureen Freely © Chris Harris
In North America, where creative writing has been an established discipline for many decades, the most famous writing programmes are the ones that have produced the greatest literary names. So from the outside they look like stables: the assumption is that they exist to train their colts for a competition that only the fittest will win. But the creative writing networks in the US and Canada also exert a powerful influence on literary culture. They offer easy and open access to contemporary writing; they provide a haven for established and admired writers who could never support themselves on their royalty cheques; they discover and nurture new talents. Each individual writer must negotiate the same vicious market, but together they promote an ethos that provides a healthy counterbalance to the ethos of commercial fiction. The writing programmes of North America support the cause of poetry and literary fiction not just by providing what the industry calls the 'raw product', but by daring to think that fiction and poetry are not products like any other. They support good writing not just by writing it, but by reading it, publishing it, promoting it and generally spreading the word.
It's a different story in the UK. Our poetry networks are strong; poets and other writers have been teaching in schools, prisons, hospitals, and other interesting venues for many decades; and the Arvon Foundation's rightly famous residential courses have launched many glittering careers. But in the larger culture, the term 'creative writing' is still viewed with suspicion. People are put off by the programmatic formality it implies. They fear that a standardised training will create standardised writers who write standardised products. The very notion that creative writing can be taught runs counter to our image of the lonely genius in the attic. It all seems so very – well – American.
When I was a young writer living in London in the 1970s, I had no connection with a creative writing network and like many of my contemporaries, I saw no need for one. We didn't need teachers because we had editors. Not only did our editors edit, guide and encourage us, they also introduced us to other writers and to the literary network. It was all very informal – we may have gone to the odd lunch or launch to advance our careers but we would rather have died than admit it. We never spoke in lofty terms of 'community' either, even though we did all feel there was something we belonged to. The literary world was not just the province of best-selling prizewinners: it was open to all working writers. And no one expected a young writer to be an overnight sensation.
But the climate is different now. Books are held to be products like any other; publishing houses must compete in a crowded, volatile and unforgiving market, and editors are dealmakers. Editors who remain committed to literary fiction and poetry must work very hard to justify their acquisitions to their marketing departments. They can no longer afford to wait a decade or so for a promising author's 'breakthrough book'. They certainly don't have time to nurture young writers. A good writing programme aims to do just that, and that is why today's young writers need them.
Our primary aim at the Warwick Writing Programme is to turn out good writers who are also good readers. Our students write in class, and for class, from their very first week with us, but they are also reading contemporary authors – and often meeting them, too. Almost every Wednesday in term-time, we invite a writer we admire to give a reading. Students who come to these events soon stop thinking of the literary world as a racecourse for the demigods: instead they come to see writers as people who write for a living because they can't imagine living any other way.
Our aim, then, is not just to encourage brave new writing and brave new writers but to teach all our students how to think and read and engage with the world imaginatively. We want them to be active participants in all forms of cultural and political life and not passive consumers. To this end, we encourage our students to consider a wide variety of careers. Those who have already won prizes and distinctions often decide to go for broke and write full-time; others choose to continue their studies, not just in the humanities but in the social sciences. Quite a few of our graduates go into education, politics, publishing, arts administration and journalism, and many of these also continue writing 'on the side'. Writing is just one of their many interests; if they ever decide to write full-time, their other careers will, we hope, make them more interesting as writers.
By the time they leave us, they have few illusions about the writing life. We make sure they know that writing is a demanding and often unrewarding vocation and that the world of publishing is cruel. But we also try and convince them that they don't have to sit there waiting for the industry to improve. We encourage them to be entrepreneurial – and a good number of them do go on to set up magazines, young-writer groups, and publishing imprints. Of course they dream of glittering prizes. But they also know that prizes alone cannot keep literary culture afloat. Committed writers must also be committed readers; good readers make good writing count.
Maureen Freely is a journalist and a novelist and teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at Warwick University. Her most recent book is , an account of the moral issues surrounding parenting.
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