Teaching creative writing: latest information

We’re very pleased to confirm that our summer publication, Teaching Creative Writing (edited by Dr Elaine Walker), is on course for publication at the end of June.

It will be published first as an e-book in ePub and Web-PDF formats and will  be available also in print with hard cover.

Details of the publication may be downloaded here in PDF or Powerpoint format: Teaching creative writing NBI (PDF) / Teaching creative writing NBI (ppt).

Introducing The View Outside – creative writing blog

Anthony Haynes writes: When I discovered Vikki Thompson’s website, The View Outside, I was attracted by its multifaceted nature, which makes provides a lively reading experience. Here Vikki kindly responds to our invitation to introduce The View Outside to new readers.

Vikki writes: I started blogging daily, as a personal challenge to myself on the 1st January 2012. I wanted to keep a record of my writing journey. Things I’d learnt along the way that were useful, and those that weren’t. It never occurred to me at that stage that anyone would want to read my ramblings. But gradually, as the weeks went on, I began to pick up followers. It seemed that people were actually reading what I had to say, and then commenting, that they liked my “voice”.

As a Creative Writing course student (on the Open College of the Arts’ BA Creative Writing course), I’d often heard about “voice” and how important it was to develop it. It’s one of those things that, as a new writer, you’re not always aware of in your own work. I know I wasn’t lol. So it was a shock to the system to hear myself described as “witty” and “inspiring”  with an “infectious sense of optimism” by my fellow Bloggers. Who was this person they we’re describing? Was it really me? Lol.

It’s difficult, believing that your peers enjoy reading what you write. I don’t think any writer is 100% happy with their work (and if you are, then please tell me what vitamins you had this morning! Lol). We’re generally lacking in confidence about our capabilities and easily dented by criticism. Writing is tough, don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. It tears at your emotions and wraps you up in isolation.

So it seems I’ve found my “voice”. A “voice” that other people actually enjoy reading. Wow, how did that happen? I try to instigate discussions on all manner of writing topics, plus share some of my own work, even if its awful lol. It’s been hard work, I won’t lie, my actual fiction writing has suffered (but my enthusiasm to edit my novel has increased). But at the same time one of the most interesting, inspiring, educational and rewarding projects I’ve ever undertaken.

Would I have it any other way? Definitely not!

Mark McGuinness on freelancing and creative entrepreneurship

Anthony Haynes writes: We are very pleased to publish the following interview with Mark McGuinness of Lateral Action.

1. So who is Mark McGuinness and what does he do?

I’m a writer and creative business coach. So apart from writing (poetry, blog posts, courses, ebooks and currently a book) I help other creative professionals become more creative and find more opportunities for their creative business/career.

2. Take someone in the ‘written word’ area of the creative industries (publishing, editing, self-publishing), thinking of setting up on their own (as a freelancer or creative entrepreneur).

a) What pieces of advice would you most want to give them?

The most important thing is to decide whether you’re up for the adventure of attracting an audience and creating your own opportunities. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also hard work, so you need to be sure you’re 100% committed to making it happen.

There are a million and one things you can do to promote yourself online and it’s easy to get confused, but fundamentally you should focus on building what Seth Godin  calls a ‘permission asset’ – i.e. a list of people who are interested in your work and who are happy (even impatient!) for you to contact them next time you have a book out. Email is the most powerful channel for this.

If you’re thinking of making a living in the book/self-publishing world, an inspiring place to start is David Gaughran’s book Let’s Get Digital – begin by reading the success stories at the back!

Other excellent resources are Joanna Penn’s blog  and the newly launched Alliance of Independent Authors  - see my interview on Lateral Action with Orna Ross, founder of the Alliance.

b) What would you suggest they avoid doing?

Waiting for the big deal to land in your lap from a kindly publisher or agent! By all means listen to approaches, but focus on building your own audience, so you always have other options.

Be wary of spending too much time on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook, at the expense of growing your mailing list. And remember, you should never add someone to your list without asking first! Give them an incentive to sign up by publishing interesting/useful/relevant content that’s related to the subject of your books.

c) What’s the best way to persuade them to come on in (the water’s lovely)?

If you do it right, you can market yourself by writing! Whether you publish a blog, newsletter, or do podcasting or video, you have an opportunity to take a creative approach to growing an audience that can be enjoyable and rewarding in its own right.

As a poet I used to loathe the idea of marketing, but thanks to the way the web has developed, it’s now one of the most enjoyable parts of my business, which I’d never have guessed a few years ago!

3. Where should they go next? What resources/services do you offer?

I publish a free 26-week course called The Creative Pathfinder, that will give you a solid grounding in the skills you need to succeed on a creative path. You can sign up here.

If you ever need some one-to-one help on getting your creative work done, or using your creativity to attract readers for your books, I offer a specialist coaching service through Lateral Action.

Review of Scriffon: publishing tool for writers

Anthony Haynes writes: A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of visiting Sam Kelly at Edinburgh Napier University to discuss their (to my mind, highly impressive) masters course in creative writing. Sam, as an erstwhile literary agent, was strong on the conception of writing as communication (rather than self-indulgence) and was keen to encourage students to  begin writing for real audiences as soon as possible.

The development of online resources to build bridges between writers and readers is making that ambition ever easier to achieve. One recently launched tool is Scriffon, a very straightforward cloud-based resource for self-publishing.

I use the word ‘straightforward’ equivocally. Critically, one might take it to mean ‘lacking in features’: it’s very much a plain text facility. More constructively, one might say that the limited functionality reduces distractions from reading and writing, thereby focusing attention on text.

To some extent, the site markets itself as a kind of anti-blog. The site removes any need to worry about visuals, commit to regular posting, or maintain a more-or-less persona. As such, it might be well suited for use by creative writing students. They can get pieces out there quickly and they can experiment with different styles and genres and use pseudonyms to help detach the ego from the writing (each account can publish under a number of pseudonyms).

One feature I like is the short column width, which aids readability.

The site is still young (at the time of writing it has 1,867 writers). Pieces are published under a creative commons licence.

Latest edition of Write4Children published

A new edition of Write4Children: the international journal for the practice and theories of writing for children and children’s literature has been published.

Edited by Vanessa Harbour and Andrew Melrose of the University of Winchester, the edition includes an essay entitled “Getting out of the box: the challenge of teaching creative writing” by Andrew Eaton.

Latest edition of Text published

The latest edition (Vol. 16, No. 1) of the open access journal, Text: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses has been published. It is a special edition entitled ‘Creativity: Cognitive, social and cultural perspectives’, edited by Nigel McLoughlin and Donna Lee Brien.

Contributions include on conversation, concerning children’s poetry, between Jen Webb and Michael Rosen and an essay on New Zealand food writing by Donna Lee Brien.

There is also a review by Kevin Brophy of our publication Rethinking Creative Writing by Stephanie Vanderslice. Brophy describes the writing style as “direct, lively, personal and energetic” and the book as a whole as “excellent resource for ideas, for inspiration, and for sources on aspects of pedagogy for creative writing programs”.

The Creative Writing Interviews: Will Cordeiro

The Creative Writing Interviews form a series of interviews with contributors to our Creative Writing Studies list. Find out about their work and approach towards writing.

Frances Haynes writes: Will Cordeiro is currently a Ph.D. candidate studying 18^th century British literature at Cornell University.  His work appears in many journals.  He is grateful for residencies from Risley Residential College, Provincetown Community Compact, Ora Lerman Trust, and Petrified Forest National Park.

As well as this, Will is a contributor to our forthcoming publication, Teaching Creative Writing. You can find out more about him here.

Will, what do you write?

I primarily write poems — or maybe I say that because I primarily think of myself as a poet. However, I also write many plays and essays (in the form of reviews, creative nonfiction, or academic work). Now and again over the years, I’ve also dabbled in fiction, whether flash fiction, short stories, or failed attempts at novels.  It’s important for me to try different genres: having some felicity with dialogue, prose rhythms, or the intricacies of narration, for example, can come in handy when I go back to writing a poem.

I think poems themselves are multifarious, especially since so much good work today is in prose poetry or cross-genre work. In other words, poetry is not (and never was) just what has a jagged right margin; poetry is what can’t be put in other words. Then again, “poetry,” as Octavio Paz said, “is what gets translated.”

So the short and long of it is, I try to keep my chops keen, writing in a variety of styles within poetry as well, including formal, free verse, narrative, dramatic, and experimental traditions. In the end, I try to do what’s best for the poem and hope to care little about establishing my voice or nourishing my ego. But the end for which I write is pure process: the intellectual, perceptual, and personal growth that occurs in the making, and then making the best of it. I write little crumbs by which I keep myself hungry.

Whom do you write for?

Ultimately, I write because I feel I have to. If nothing I wrote was ever published, I would still go on writing.  I would still go on writing even if I had to blot each scribble before it dried. Sometimes lines are composed in my head without deliberation or compunction; there are times when I literally daydream in blank verse. As a matter of operational principle, though, I believe poems are a dispensation from the muses: they arrive unbidden and we can’t force them, we can only prepare ourselves for them through work, praise, reading, and sacrifices. The bee-swarm blooming from the bovine gut at the culmination of Virgil’s Georgics could be the hive of the alphabet itself, the buzz of language. A good poem stings. It’s conceived in the gut.

Nonetheless, the bulk of what I do—year in, year out — is revision, a long and squalid midwifery. Perhaps I write for myself, though I revise for others. Yet, it’s almost always in revision where I make breakthroughs and discoveries. Because the initial impetus of a poem comes from something not you, and “a poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence” (Keats), the experience of revision is often more personal, at least more cerebral: it allows time to think through the composition word by word. One does all this work, ironically, so none of it is visible. Visible, that is, to the (hypothetical) reader—but that reader can very well be oneself alone in a room.  While one can’t revise a poem — a good poem — into existence through sheer craft, one can certainly try to make the most of one’s gifts. The pains the poet takes, to crib Frost, become the reader’s pleasures; but maybe I’m a masochist.

What achievement are you most proud of as a writer?

Probably the achievement I’m most proud of is that I have the audacity to bother with writing after so many years of moiling and maundering about, especially since the more I read and write and learn, the more clearly I begin to see the enormity of the flaws in my work. I still have no idea what I’m really doing, and yet I still keep doing it each day. This either seems to hint at the myth of poets going blind or, more likely, Einstein’s definition of insanity. At any rate, to insist on challenging myself to make it different and better, to utterly renovate and change, and (perhaps foolishly) to believe that this is even a possibility, propels me. Inertia is responsible for keeping things rolling as much as it is for the difficulty we have in getting things rolling. Hence, perhaps the best advice I received from my own creative writing instructors was simply to keep on keeping on. Just keeping it up is a kind of upkeep of the soul, an imposition of order in the face of the forces of squalor and entropy that threaten to overtake us daily.

What involvement do you have / have you had with creative writing as a university/college subject/discipline?

Before graduate school, I had almost no formal workshop experience. I now have an MFA in poetry from Cornell University, where I have also taught creative writing classes at the undergraduate level. In addition, I have taught creative writing to gifted high school students (who work at the college level) through Johns Hopkins CTY summer program, and I like to incorporate some creative writing exercises in the composition classes I currently teach to adult inmates in prison. Both before and after my MFA, the most valuable exchanges and feedback about work-in-progress have come from personal friends and fellow writers, whether ones I met in workshop, school, or elsewhere. But the value of workshop for me has been less about responses I received to my own work, and more about having to confront and puzzle out other’s work, especially the work where I felt unmoored, and then to offer feedback that was both honest and helpful.

What do you think is the value of the workshop model in general?

The workshop model, from what I’ve read, developed in a very specific context, notably Paul Engle’s stewardship of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in the 1940’s. The students and teachers there were a rowdy bunch of well-versed, egotists — mostly male and mostly white; basically, big mouths, many of whom later turned out to be big shots. The model developed under these conditions was later exported to hundreds of institutions with its assumptions virtually unchanged, despite the fact that today the circumstances of these institutions and the writers in them are vastly different.

First, the orthodox workshop model is used in high schools and in undergrad electives among students who often have limited previous exposure to literature, affecting their ability to comment on many pieces. This workshop model assumes fairly comprehensive background knowledge of literature by the writer’s peers (even back then, those Iowa writers had craft lectures and old-fashioned literature classes they were supposed to attend, which abetted workshops).

Furthermore, the Iowa model is designed to get the writer to shut up while the bigger problem in many classes today, in my experience, is to get students talking, whether about their own work or other’s. Indeed, students at all levels need to talk more openly about the values, goals, aesthetics, and assumptions they’re bringing to the table both as writers and readers. Especially in poetry, the diversity within contemporary practice can make it challenging for writers to communicate and critique work that falls outside their personal or stylistic purviews. This can, however, become one of the most fruitful aspects of a workshop, allowing seemingly incommensurable subject positions, poetics, or theoretical stances to be in dialogue as actual young writers struggle to articulate not only their own writing but the reasoning, values, and motivations that shape it. I’m advocating that it’s time we start rethinking the antiquated workshop model so that it fits the needs of our students today.

What is your ambition as a writer?

To write work that is complex and moving.  Perhaps moving alone would do and would avoid the charge of sentimentalism since I mean “moving” in both senses of the word: a text that moves its readers, but also a text that itself seems to move, becoming different with each surpassing reading, much like Heraclitus’s remark about a man not being able to stand in the same river twice.