Can Writing Be Taught?

In a recent Guardian article, the writer Rachel Cusk explored the rise of creative writing classes and asked the question, ‘Can writing be taught?’ It is a question that polarises opinion.  For example, there are certain writers: the ‘special ones’ who insist that writing cannot be taught. According to these writers, their talent is god-given and you’ve either got it or you ain’t.  This point of view annoys me to say the least.  The exclusivity of it; the sense of entitlement – ‘this is mine, you can’t have it.’
My take on this issue is similar to Rachel Cusk’s and Raymond Carver’s (Great people to share opinions with). I think that encouraging students to think seriously about writing is tremendously helpful.  For anybody who doubts the value of teaching writing, I would urge them to read Raymond Carver’s foreword to John Gardner’s On Becoming A Novelist. ( It is also included as an essay - John Gardner: The Writer As Teacher - in Raymond Carver’s Fires.)  In it, Carver discusses the profound influence that Gardner had on him as a teacher; how he shaped his attitude and values. He also states:

…’It was his experience – and it has been mine, in my role as a teacher of creative writing – that certain aspects of writing can be taught and handed over to other, usually younger writers.  This idea shouldn’t come as a surprise to any person seriously interested in education and the creative act.  Most good or even great conductors, composers, microbiologists, ballerinas, mathematicians, visual artists, astronomers, or fighter pilots, learned their business from older and more accomplished practitioners.  Taking classes in creative writing, like taking classes in pottery or medicine, won’t in itself make anyone a great writer, potter or doctor – it may not even make the person anygood at any of these things.  But Gardner was convinced that it wouldn’t hurt your chances either.’

Of course you may say that Raymond Carver was a naturally gifted writer – he probably would have become a writer anyway, had he not had the good fortune to find himself in John Gardner’s writing class. But without Gardner’s influence, Carver’s writing may have been very different.

Carver also makes the point – a point I agree with, ‘That no teacher or any amount of education can make a writer out of someone who is constitutionally incapable of becoming a writer in the first place’.  But for writers with an aptitude, and a willingness to learn and to think seriously about their craft, then writing classes can be hugely beneficial.

I am currently running a series of free writing workshops called What’s Your Story? and have been impressed by the efforts shown by the participants to incorporate the narrative techniques that we discuss each week.  We did a workshop recently on dialogue and writers who had previously shied away from dialogue – got stuck in with fantastic results.  The classes are – I hope – making the writers think critically about their own work and their own methods of writing.  Which can only be a good thing.

Some of the participants from What’s Your Story? will be blogging in the next few weeks about their experiences on the course.  If you’d like to find out more about what goes on in the sessions check out our guest bloggers to find out all the ins and outs…

Paula Currie 

What's Your Story?

At the beginning of December we began our first What's Your Story?sessions.  My initial worry that I would be speaking to an empty room proved totally unfounded.  We had an excellent turn out.   Both the taster sessions and the course itself were very well attended and attracted an interesting, creative mix of people, all keen to start writing.
So much in creative writing groups depends on the mix of people in the room and at What's Your Story? we've got a real cross section of ages, backgrounds, and experience.  This really adds something to the sessions.  The discussions were lively and interesting - because the people on the course are lively and interesting.  There was never a lull in the proceedings.  Participants always had something to say: an opinion to offer, or an insight to share and I learned as much as anyone else - even though I'm the course tutor.  That's the thing that never fails to surprise me:  how much you can learn through teaching.  I read some stories that I know really well and at each session, someone offered me an insight into the story which hadn't occurred to me before.  I really love that.  

As well as reading stories in the group we also write at each session.  We always complete one or two short writing exercises. These exercises only take about 10 - 20 minutes to complete, sometimes I just do a couple of very short 5 minute exercises.  This is intended to reduce anxiety around writing.  Many people worry that they have to produce a work of genius - that it has to be amazing, or why bother?  You can talk yourself out of writing before you even begin.  We often listen to that voice that tells us: 'This has been done before, and better, what have you got to say that's new? And who's going to be interested?'  And it stops us before we even start.  I always tell people to ignore that voice and just pick up a pen and begin.  Usually the work that they produce is much better than they imagined.  And even if it isn't, it's just a starting point, a sketch - it can be worked on and fleshed out, improved and re-imagined.  That's what the writing exercises provide participants with: a starting point, a lump of clay that they can mould into whatever shape they want.

Some of the work produced by the group so far, has been of a very high standard.  We'll be publishing the work on the website in the next few months, and the writers will be participating in a group writing project - so look out for that, too.

If you'd like to get involved in What's Your Story?  There are still some places available.  The Toxteth daytime session is full but there are still some places left on the evening course which takes place on Monday 7th January at the Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre, Princes Road, L8 1TH. (6.00 - 8.00pm) There are also a few places left on the Croxteth course, which takes place on Tuesday 8th January at  Communiversity, Altcross Road, L11 0BS (10.00-12.00pm)  So why not make creative writing one of your New Year's resolutions?  If you've always wanted to write, but need some help and encouragement to get you started then why not come along to one of the groups.  We've got a lovely mixture of participants who are very warm and encouraging of each other's work.  So if you'd like to come along you'd be very welcome.  

Hope to see you at one of the groups.  Have a very Merry Christmas and a happy and creative New Year!
I'm spending a bit of time writing over Christmas - I promised myself that I'd have the final draft of my novel finished by Christmas and I've missed my own deadline.  So I'll have to get busy...

Paula Currie

Pot Novel! (Just add words)

A few weeks ago an interesting looking supplement fell out of The Guardian. It was called 'How to write a book in 30 days.'  Having spent well over a year writing my own first novel, I snatched it open.   The title, it has to be said, was a bit of a con.  On reading the supplement it became clear that it wasn't a manual in how to write an actual book in 30 days, it was a guide to writing a 30 day plan for writing a book.  The final page merrily asserts that once the 30 day plan is complete, 'Only then, finally, is it time to start writing the book itself.'  Hmmm.

Everybody is anxious for a quick route to writing a novel but there really isn't one.  It takes as long as it takes and there are no real short cuts.  Some writers spend months, even years, thinking about their novel, letting ideas and characters percolate.  Other writers move into the writing process a lot quicker and prefer to work their ideas out practically, on the page.
Last year, I met the award-winning novelist Cynan Jones who blithely informed me that he'd written his first novel, The Long Dry (winner of the Betty Trask Award) in two weeks!  It's a very short novel - but it's still an astonishing feat.  I'd love to be able to tell you that his writing is careless and obviously rushed, but it's actually a stunning novel; beautifully written, which wholly deserves the acclaim that it received.

All writers go through a different writing process.  That's why I'm wary of self help books promising writing miracles.  There's no one correct way to go about it.  What works for one writer often creatively stifles another.  You may be aware that November is 'National Novel Writing Month'. (www.nanowrimo.org/ ) Writers who sign up, will attempt to write a 50,000 novel in a month.  This is an actual novel, not a plan for a novel as above.  Some writers will find this notion profoundly unsettling, it just wouldn't work for them.  But others may find that it gives them the kick start they need to get cracking on the novel they've been planning for years.  Will any of these novels be any good?  Only time will tell.  But one thing is certain: you may have an idea for novel but until you start writing, it's only an idea.  Until you have words on a page you have nothing.  Maybe it's time to write those ideas down.  Okay, so maybe you won't finish it in a month - but you'll make a start.  So go on - get cracking!

Paula Currie

A Room of One's Own

As you may know, we are currently in the process of setting up What's Your Story?  a series of free creative writing workshops to be held in Liverpool.  One of the weekly sessions will take place in the city centre and the other is going to be held in Croxteth, at Communiversity's new Creative Campus.
I hadn't been to Communiversity before, so last week I  paid them a long-overdue visit.  I had the real pleasure of meeting Sheila Sweeney and Phil Knibb, the two inspirational people who have worked so hard to make Communiversity a reality.  They've done a fantastic job with the place.  it's an amazing community resource and a real testament to what communities can achieve when they pull together.

I'm going to be running the What's Your Story workshops from their new Creative Campus and I can't wait to get started.  Phil and Sheila have provided a beautifully designed, fully refurbished building for our use, which includes a teaching room, theatre space, recording studio and - this particularly delighted me - private rooms for participants to write in!

They are beautiful and such a useful idea.  It's a nod to Virginia Woolf's notion that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.' Unfortunately, we can't do anything about the money situation - but we can provide men and women with a room of their own to write in.   They're going to be so helpful to writers.  Sometimes it's impossible to find a space to think in - let alone write in.  Kids arguing, telly blaring, next door playing thrash metal at all hours. (And that's just in my house) So I know what it's like.  The writing rooms at the Creative Campus will provide people with a haven, a space to be creative in.  I'm really looking forward to seeing the writing rooms in use.  Sheila and Phil have done a wonderful job of creating the right environment for people to write in - so I want to ensure that the place is packed to capacity.

If you'd like to participate in What's Your Story? contact me on:
info@writingonthewall.org.uk and I'll keep you up to date with developments.


Paula Currie

Poetry plea...

Last Thursday was National Poetry Day. You will now, either stop reading immediately, or carry on enthusiastically, because like marmite, poetry seems to provoke extreme reactions from people. They either love it or hate it.
I’m firmly in the love camp, (for poetry and marmite) but I do understand where the poetry haters are coming from. I haven’t always liked poetry. Like many people, I hated it at school. We read boring poems that I didn’t understand: poems that didn’t speak to me on any level. Adrian Mitchell’s famous quote, ‘Most people ignore most poetry, because most poetry ignores most people.’ felt utterly true.

But something changed: it sounds obvious, but you have to shop around with poetry. Just because you don’t like one particular song, you would never say that you don’t like music. Yet we do this all the time with poetry. Just because we don’t like a particular style of poetry or we had a bad experience with it at school – we write off poetry as a whole. We say we hatepoetry. But we don’t. We just haven’t found a poem that we like yet. And this takes a bit of work. It’s not like hearing a catchy song on the radio and then going out and buying the album. Music surrounds us but we have to seek poetry out – although the internet has made this much easier.  It’s a hit and miss process, you’ll read loads of stuff that you don’t like but then suddenly your eye will drop onto a poem that could have been written for you. You’ll think it has been, you’ll smirk to yourself, suddenly intrigued, you didn’t realise poetry could be this good. Then you’ll read everything that the poet has written, then you may start looking at the poets who inspired your poet, and then suddenly you’re away! You like poetry.

On National Poetry day, I spent the day at a poetry reading at The Bluecoat Chambers hosted by local poet, Denis Joe of North End Writers. It was a rare opportunity to hear dozens of people reading poems of their own and sharing poems that they love with the audience. I was impressed at the range of work that was read out: witty, political, heartfelt, intelligent…. and the odd one about cats. It was a place to sit and listen, some of it would just wash over you, but then you’d hear something that stopped you cold. It was worth going for that moment: the moment when you hear something that grabs hold of you and keeps hold of you, something - a line or an image that you know will stay with you. That’s what I love about poetry and that’s why I’ll be celebrating National Poetry Day again next year.

Paula Currie

First day at Wow

This is the first of many blogs that I hope to be posting as Wow's new Writer in residence. It's the first time that Wow has appointed a writer in residence and I'm thrilled to have been selected.  I'm really looking forward to getting out and about around Liverpool and hopefully inspiring people to pick up a pen and start writing. I've been teaching creative writing in Liverpool for ten years now at The Spider Project and we've uncovered some real talent there.  Part of my job as WIR involves setting up writing workshops and over the next few months I'm sure that these workshops will uncover even more. I'm also going to be blogging about the writing process.  In 2011 I won the Writing on the Wall's Pulp Idol competition.  A competition that I can thoroughly recommend. I'd been working on the novel for years in a slightly haphazard fashion, but winning the competition really spurred me on to complete it. I'm chuffed to say that I finally finished work on the first draft in August, (I love saying that!). Over the next few months I'm going to be re-drafting it and sending it out to publishers and agents. I'm planning to blog about this process too, which will hopefully provide an insight into the difficult business of getting your first novel published. Or I might go down the internet route and self publish!  Haven't decided yet...  We'll have to see what happens. Either way it's an exciting business and I'm looking forward to getting my work out there. If you've got a novel that you're burning to publish or you would like to begin one - or you just want to start writing, keep checking the WOW website as we'll be setting up writing workshops in the next few months. I'm really keen to establish links between writers, as I know how difficult it is when you're stuck at home writing alone. Anyway keep checking the website and we'll keep you posted!

Paula Currie

A lie is halfway round the world...

A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has even got its boots on. Not an original thought, I know, but hard to get out of my mind as its never been truer than in the case of Hillsborough, and never better understood than by the South Yorkshire Police and their partners in the media – with The Sun leading the charge, the judiciary, the coroners office, the courts and all manner of politicians. That there is no smoking gun leading to Thatcher means little, there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to lay the blame for the culture amongst the South Yorkshire Police and The Sun and the other bodies mentioned above, firmly at her door i.e. firmly at the door of the top of the establishment itself.

I wasn’t at Hillsborough, but I travelled there the following day to get interviews with the fans who were there, and the survivors in hospital, for a special edition of Mersey Militant, which I and my friends were active supporters of at the time. We wanted to give the fans a voice – a chance to tell their own stories and get them out amidst the lies that were already gaining ground in the national media. In hindsight, as right as we were to do that, it was a drop in the ocean compared to scale of the deceits being prepared and which have lasted for 23 years, until yesterday.

My memories of the day are a little hazy now, but two things stick in my mind. The first was talking to a supporter who ‘died’ three times on the pitch after being pulled out of the Leppings Lane end of the ground the stand which the majority of the fans who died were in. Three times his heart had stopped and three times he’d been revived by fans and, if I remember rightly, a policewoman. The other memory is of some of the Liverpool FC team, Alan Hansen and Ian Rush amongst them, coming to the hospital and walking round the wards to talk to the fans and offer their support. The players looked shell shocked, as did the supporters, many of whom had stayed since game to look after, or comfort, friends and relatives.

Scale of deceit

And who wouldn’t have been shocked into a daze at the scale of tragedy that happened at a football match on a sunny day, the aftermath of which was played out on national TV? Well the Police, for one, weren’t in a daze, because now we know, in undeniable detail, on a scale of deceit that even drew an audible, involuntary gasp from a packed House of Commons, that the Police leadership, who could hardly raise a finger to save a life on the day, managed to work themselves into a lather when they realised just how culpable they were for the course of events that unfolded on Sunday 15^thApril.

But why a conspiracy on such a scale to smear a set of fans, guilty of nothing more than going to a match; and why did they feel so confident to be so brazen as to think they could get away with it?

Because in their eyes this was a class war and they would get all the back up they needed. The South Yorkshire force had already seen plenty of action against The Striking miners of ’84 to ’85. They were Thatcher’s favourite police force. Thatcher herself had denounced the Miners as the enemy within, but this applied also to the Liverpool Militants and to football fans, regarded and treated as little more than animals. This culture led to a complete disregard for the rights and conditions of the fans who travelled to Hillsborough, and even less regard for those who lost their lives there too.

And that’s why I’m not surprised by the revelations that came out today. I’m just not. I’ve been on too many demonstrations and picket lines, and witnessed too many times the way the police and the media (notwithstanding many fine people I personally know in the police force and the media) act when they think they can get away with it, to be surprised by what happened in the aftermath of Hillsborough. I’m sickened that anyone could stoop so low as to search for evidence of drunkenness and past criminality to try and slander the dead, and appalled at treatment of these incredible families who simply want to know how their loved ones died, but I’m not surprised.

I was in no doubt as to what the verdict of the panel would be today. We all knew anyway. In my mind I couldn’t imagine what else it could do but vindicate the fans and reveal the lies that so many had laboured to conceal. But still, with all that in-built cynicism and belief, as the news filtered out over the radio and on the internet and the scale of the cover up was finally publicly revealed, I found myself holding back tears and wanting to punch the air with joy.

Wave of relief

I think I’m right in saying that many people across the city will have felt the way I did today, surprised and amazed at the waves of emotion that ran over me, a mixture of grief, anger and relief, which just kept coming and keeps on coming even now as I write these words. It really does feel as though a collective weight has been lifted from the city. We feel vindicated, and step lighter than we did before yesterday.

You cannot stop time, and yet this is what was attempted by the coroner who established the ridiculous 3.15pm cut off time – in my mind one of the clearest indicators that the establishment was closing ranks behind the judicial process. After 23 years The Hillsborough Justice campaigns have achieved the impossible, they have forced the hands of time forward again, and opened up a world of possibilities.

But already on the news tonight, legal experts are pontificating about how difficult it will be to hold anyone truly to account for the lies and the conspiracies that have now been proven. True, there are some very strong voices calling for prosecutions, but if you listen hard enough you can almost hear it – ‘it’s a long time ago, people won’t really be able to remember what happened, who said what, and on, and on, and on.’ As though to say that if you can dodge the courts for just enough time, then you should simply be granted a free pass.

Did anyone hear that mentioned when Asil Nadir returned to face the music for his multi-million pound theft after absconding for 17 years? No, because Money never forgets, it always gets its due. The Hillsborough families had no money. The City Council stepped in to cover the train fares for them to be able to travel down to the judicial enquiries at the House of Lords.

Accountability?

The families, the campaigners and the Independent Panel have finally unearthed the truth. Justice, in the form of new enquiries and re-shaped verdicts you would imagine should be almost a formality. Hopefully, for the families and the survivors this report will bring some closure. But accountability – I’m not so sure.

One of the local radio talk show hosts remarked today that the families had won. My question is: If that is the case, why do the only casualties still seem to be from those on the 'winning' side?

But in saying all the above, that is the process the families will follow now that the truth is out.

Another truth is that it was the people themselves, the families first and foremost, the justice campaigns, and many other organisations and thousands upon thousands of individuals who refused to let this issue be swept under the carpet that finally exposed one of the biggest cover ups in British legal history. Yesterday was their day, one they had earned through love, dedication and solidarity.

YNWA JFT96.