I return to my planned series of posts about creative writing based on my experience as an editor, writer and creative writing educator for over a decade. I’m no longer teaching creative writing because of the programme restructuring over at my Centre; I teach literature, literacy, and popular culture courses for MA and PhD students while also supervising 20-something PhD candidates. To be honest it’s a bit of a relief not teaching creative writing anymore. I’ve not been publishing short fiction since 2020; I very much feel like a literary has-been, indie-published debut novel notwithstanding. I feel students deserve better and not possessing of an MFA I’ve often felt I don’t have enough qualifications but I was requested to teach the course and so it defined quite a few years of my teaching career.
However, my experience is still valid and this post is actually aimed at would-be creative writing educators and purveyors of many types of writing advice on the socials, some of which are very much into the “Let them eat cake” variety. Look, we all know the writing path is different for everyone. Some people can get success without a degree, without a creative writing qualification and seem to magically be able to conjure sentences and paragraphs that can go straight to your hearts and minds. That’s fine. That’s wonderful. But not everyone is a creative writing wunderkind. There are many able and fine authors out there who struggle without being noticed because they did not get that fortunate combination of luck, contacts, writing that somehow hits the right spot and the correct alignment of the stars or whatnot. Are they less deserving? No. But they do need to eat. They need jobs. And if their passion is for the written word, it’s natural they’d want jobs connected to language and the written word.
That’s where I have come in as a creative writing educator since 2011 at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. My responsibility has been to strike that balance between nurturing their creativity and writing acumen, but also to teach them to write according to brief, and how to edit, how to critique their peers, how to live within a circle of practice. As editors we always tell writers to read the guidelines, read some issues before submitting. This is the same thing for people wanting to apply for technical writing jobs, copywriting jobs or editing gigs. They need to know the formats, they need to know how to write to brief. Sure, they can indulge in beautifully complex and flowery prose; in fact, I encourage it during the poetry and poetic prose and creative non-fiction segments as well as the fiction segments of my courses. But at the end of the day, they also need the discipline to learn how to write to brief and to produce clean copy where required.
Hence, striking that balance. Not crushing that youthful creative fire but still instilling discipline. It’s not always easy. Sometimes I get students more turbulent, more rebellious and more…frightening than the rest. Some seemed to think I exist to be their punching bag! Fortunately, in the 13 years of teaching creative writing, these were the minority. Most of my creative writing alumni are hard working, diligent, and with an abundance of ideas/creativity. They write well and they are all on their own writing paths. Some of my alumni have secured writing jobs, teaching jobs. At least a couple that I know of even won writing prizes! This isn’t a flex, but is part of my point — while giving advice, while teaching — please remember that as teachers in ANY creative field we have a really difficult responsibility. We need to teach them the rules (what is an editor who does not know the rules of grammar, a musician sitting for exams without a grasp of theory) while also encouraging them to play with their creative talents, to find their own voice and their own path. A balance I personally have found (and your mileage may vary) is to tell them: “Nothing in this course is prescriptive. I teach you the rules but outside of the course agreement (no hate, no plagiarism, please adhere to ethical behaviour and respect your fellow writers in this course), you are free to follow your own path so long as you submit your assignments on time”.
Of course, I also gave feedback on their work and encouraged them to take it to the next level. Whenever I felt a work met a certain standard I’d send links to magazines where they should submit it with strong exhortations not to waste time. That’s the part of being a creative writing educator people do not see. It goes beyond grand proclamations on social networks about how you should write however you choose and that because so-and-so succeeded without doing so-and-so, then you don’t need these tools. I find such declarations quite irresponsible, to be honest. Please don’t. I don’t have a horse in this race because I don’t intend to teach creative writing again. But I also have concerns about certain types of discourse going around. There’s more than one kind of writing. It would benefit any young writer to have as many tools in their arsenal as possible. Because it’s rough out there. Not all of us are privileged enough to get multiple book deals and attention. And writers need to eat.
Thanks for reading this. Written out of concern, not rancour.