There are a lot of creative writing courses around at the moment, all explicitly or implicitly promising something that it seems to me is never quite specified. A short-cut to success, perhaps. 

The truth of the matter is that good writing requires dedication and hard work. And certain opportunities and resources. Many failures, little hope of success. It takes a certain kind of person to do it. Leaving aside questions of talent, you have to be willing, as I think Will Self said in the Guardian recently, to submit yourself to long periods of solitary confinement. It’s a lonely job, and if you can't hack that, don't apply. It also involves a peculiar kind of relationship with the world. A distance. Writers should never belong to anything. They should be the grit in the oyster. Difficult. Awkward. Outsiders.

In our society, writers are like priests. We don't on the whole believe in organised religion, but we do believe in art, and in particular the word. We also live in a society in which, thanks largely to the internet, everyone can claim attention through the word with the minimum effort. We can all be writers. Result: the triumph of opinion over knowledge. Nobody need submit themselves to the long years of hard work and study needed to master a subject, or to create a work of art.

I wonder how many times I have heard fellow creative writing students say, I've not done much writing lately..? I've said it myself. Yet much effort goes into talking about writing, and to chat about this or that opportunity, or just chat. It's lovely, but it’s not the real thing.

The thing about a creative writing course is that in a sense it doesn't matter if you succeed or not. What constitutes success is an open question. But it’s not like training to be, say, a nurse or a pilot, or a lorry driver. The job of writing for a living does not require you to hold any qualifications (arguably journalism is an exception, but creative writing courses include none of the emphasis on productivity that journalism courses do).

Of course there are some people who come on creative writing courses who do have the stuff that writers are made of, and there are useful things to be gained from the best courses if you are that sort. But these people probably will be writers anyway. Whether what they will write will be as good is a different question.

Meanwhile, the courses attract large numbers of hopeful would-be writers who for a while and a fee can tell themselves they are what they want to be. Some will succeed. Most won't.

There are no short cuts. Anything more than therapy in writing (and I don’t belittle that) depends on talent, hard work, sacrifice, contacts, and luck. On the will to communicate and on having something to say. Everything else follows from that.
 


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