On Creative Writing Courses and Short Cuts

(There are No Short Cuts)

I can only do yesterday’s post once.

The unexpected one-liner.

And yet it’s far from a joke.

It is what I usually say, if I have only five seconds to say something useful.

And your final piece of advice?

1. There are no short cuts.

But I usually add a second part.

Former students will know it, and will be able to join in —

2. There are no wasted hours.

Every second you put into really writing, writing full-heartedly rather than looking for ways to get the writing done as soon as possible, will somehow help later on.

It may not make what you’re working on better, but it may make something later doable. That note you scratched out with the dying ballpoint, or that sudden association between that and them.

The opening.

That notion — popularised by golfers Gary Player and Arnold Palmer — of ‘It’s a funny thing, the more I practice, the luckier I get.’

But I’ve been asked, very fairly, If there aren’t any short cuts, why should I bother taking a Creative Writing course?

The answer, put simply, is that there may be no short cuts but that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to benefit from having bad roads, dead ends and half-built bridges pointed out to you.

Yes, you can write a multiple viewpoint time-travelling fantasy novel, but you’re going to need a map, an amphibious vehicle and plenty of fuel and supplies — you can’t do it with just hope, a moped and a pack of Frazzles.

There are ways in which a Creative Writing course can increase your maximum velocity, or your ability to safely steer a speeding vehicle — although that, again, shouldn’t be the point.

Haste and corner cutting will both be there on the page for others to see in completed works; and uncompleted works will be what they’ve always been — a possibility that it remains your responsibility to ditch or drive on.

Enough of the motor metaphor. Most of the time writing — especially novel writing — is, as you know, about travelling at walking pace.

Or crawling.

All of which leaves out the most important thing about Creative Writing courses.

That you’re not by yourself.

There are other people around with whom you can have a version of this conversation. Please insert long pauses, wherever possible —

Writing is hard.

Yes, it’s really hard.

It’s a harder than I thought.

It’s really a lot harder than I thought.

But I like it.

Yes, but it’s hard.

Really really hard.

Why didn’t someone warn me?

They did.

Oh yes.

After which, everyone feels better.

You might have this exchange with fellow students, or with the tutor.

What they’re both saying, what they both should say, is that what you’re going through — the crawl or the sudden scary acceleration — is normal. It’s happened to lots of other people before. It was happening to your tutor only yesterday. No need to freak out. No need to start seeking out short cuts.

Just keep going.