Horses for Writing Courses...?

[Nick]

Anita Desai questions the usefulness of creative writing courses, even though she has taught on them herself!

I blogged at length on this and related matters on my blog this morning. Diversionary tactics for not being able to face my novel in progress, I think. Oh, the irony!

There have also been some writers lately declaring their involvement with Twitter well and truly over as nothing but gnat-buzzing noise of the white kind to their creative process. There is no substitute for extended periods of cold, hard, singular thought when it comes to writing fiction. We live in an age increasingly of instant intrusive communication (can be argued that I am doing it now) whereby the singular strength of that vision which comes from uniterrupted persiods of cold, hard creative thought is becoming denuded.

[Michelle]

Yes, you coined it with the Age of Instant Intrusive Communication. For ideas to come to life, to be explored, you must have that time to yourself...offline and unplugged from all our favourite little distractions.

Writing courses can be beneficial guides to point you in the right direction or even highlight an aspect of the creative process that you may not have explored or considered. However some courses can also easily confuse and cause you to try and fit your creativity into a way of thinking that just won't fit...square plug round hole (or is it the other way around). I suppose it depends on the individual writer and what his needs are to get himself from one word to the next. I don't know the answer, what I do know is that if one of my favourite writers came up to me and with an all-knowing wagging finger said to me "You know, you really should think about going on a writing course - its what I did", then I would probably consider enrolling the next day.

So there is the question of questions - what did the greats do?

[RobertB]

I think we need both. I do need time to myself, and I get it on the allotment, when I'm out shopping, or sometimes lying awake in bed. At the same time we need other people to try ideas on, or to critique our work. If you can find a creative writing course that does that, go ahead.

[Milton Davis]

I think a large part of creative writing is natural talent or ability, but I also think creative writing courses are useful in providing tools to evaluate your writing and to find answers to issues that may be hampering your development. I don't they should be used to critique a person's style, but they can be useful to help a person develop the technical aspect of writing. Just like everything else artistic good writing can come naturally or be taught. I think great writing is the result of both. I don't know what Twitter has to do with the creative process. Who creates a story on Twitter? Why?