I met a bloke in a queue at a ball last summer. This might sound glamorous; I assure you, it was not. By that point in the evening (or perhaps morning), I had long since hidden my heels in a hydrangea, my gown had accumulated a thin line of mud along the hem, and I’d just been traumatically squished in a crowd of people whilst listening to The Fratellis. The bloke and his friends were standing behind us, and, I suppose to pass the time, they struck up a conversation. I told him that I’d just finished a degree in Modern Literature. “Oooh,” he said, “I’m sorry, but to be honest I just find all modern literature disappointing.” This was a shame. He then asked me my future plans, so I told him I would be starting a degree in Creative Writing. “Ooooh,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I just fundamentally disagree with that.” I must have looked rather confused, because he felt the need to elaborate. “I just don’t think you can teach creativity. You can either write or you can’t.” I decided that we couldn’t be friends.
It’s an interaction I think about fairly often. Even more so now I have started the course, and lots of (much more well-intentioned) people have been asking me how it all works. My answer usually goes along the lines of “oh well there are seminars and workshops and we talk about words and stories and plots and it’s quite inspiring because I love being surrounded by writers”. Or a different iteration of that response. It’s serving me quite well so far, I think, but I worry that I’m not doing enough justice to the process. Because, of course, as any writer will tell you, it is a process. Writing takes time; it is a skill that needs to be nurtured. If you don’t believe me, look at the hundreds of different advice books on writing. They are often called something along the lines of On Writing or Becoming a Writer, and tend to hold a selection of frustratingly true aphorisms which make you realise that writing is indeed sort of tricky, but also sort of achievable.
I have come across many of these books. I’ve read a fair chunk of a fair few of them. For those of you who would enjoy a (very concise) summary of contents, here is what I have deduced thus far…
Firstly, they tell you to write. You just have to do the thing. This sounds incredibly obvious, but – trust me – it can become very easy to think about all the wonderful things you are going to write, whilst not actually putting any words on paper. You’ll tell everyone that you plan to write a novel (ahem), or that you’ll write a poem about that particular thing you noticed (ahem), or that you have lots of wonderful ideas for your next column…
However – and here’s the rub – you also have to not write. You have to put yourself in the world and observe things and make notes about how strange humans tend to be before you can write about them. Nora Ephron puts it very well when she says that “everything is copy”. It’s one of my favourite maxims, partly because it’s a nice way to feel slightly better about life when things all go a little bit pear-shaped. Mainly, though, it’s a great excuse to justify doing fun things. Would I, you ask, like to leave the library early to go and get a glass of wine? Everything is copy. Shall we mooch round Oxford and spend all our money on flat whites? Everything is copy. Pub trip? Everything is copy. Buy a pony? Everything is copy.
Indeed, they say that you should never try to negotiate with a blank page. You must have something in your armoury. They also say (remember what I said about there being a lot of aphorisms?) that you should trust your reader, and kill your darlings, and if it sounds like writing, start again.
I would like to add some ideas to the list. Do, of course, take these with a hefty pinch of salt; if we are talking about the process of ‘Becoming a Writer’, I very much see myself at the ‘Becoming’ rather than the ‘Writer’ end of the scale… From my humble experience of putting words down on a page, however, I would stress that it is important to get used to the feeling of hating everything you write. It’s awful. You read back your work and want to crawl into a small dark hole. When I read my previous columns, I think EURGH, and tell myself it’s probably better to leave them well alone.
What also sucks is that you’ll likely hate the thing you’re writing during the time you’re actually writing it, too. There is a stage of every girl’s makeup routine at which she desperately hopes her boyfriend will not knock on the door. This is because she has weird stripes under her cheekbones or discernibly pale blots under her eyes, and until she does a bit of blending etcetera, there is a risk that she might look quite insane. It is important, during these moments, that she reminds herself (and aforementioned perturbed boyfriend) that it is very much an it gets worse before it gets better sort of thing. This is a strange analogy, but I think that writing is often the same. It’s why I hate people looking over my shoulder at my laptop screen: they’d see a collection of weird writing idiosyncrasies that make no sense to anyone but me. For example, I like to type XXX when I’m unsure of a word or idea and need a filler until my brain engages again, and I can come back to it. It’s quite a handy technique, but it can make me look like I’m writing code.
But – and here’s the bit I’ve been getting to – this is exactly the point. Once you’ve consulted all the books on ‘Becoming a Writer’, you will notice that they tell you a bunch of rules, encourage you to practice the rules, and then give you free rein to bin off the rules and work out what works for you. There is more than one way, in other words, of skinning this particular cat.
This is very nice news for someone who dreams of being a writer, even if it is tricky to explain to a bloke in a queue at a ball. What I should have told him, perhaps, was what my dream life will look like once I publish my novel/screenplay/poetry collection and it’s all going swimmingly. The dream? I see myself in a country kitchen. I am surrounded by Emma Bridgewater crockery and there is a lemon drizzle quietly baking in the AGA. There are a few dogs snoozing at my feet, obviously. I am making notes with a beautiful Montblanc fountain pen, quietly chuckling to myself when I write a mildly funny sentence. I look up; there are a few muddy children outside, in wellies, supervised by a small herd of friendly donkeys which I have named Edgar, Allan, and Poe.
The problem? You may have guessed. I haven’t yet decided what said novel/ screenplay/ poetry collection will be. This is only a small issue (ahem), but in the meantime I must perfect an answer to the inevitable question: “What are you going to write?” “Ah well. I’m so glad you asked! I’m currently working on a XXX. It’s inspired by XXX and quite tonally similar to XXX. I already have the title! It’s XXX.”