The Novelwriter's Toolkit Page 9

  Try to find out the probable size of workshop groups when you check the course details: somewhere between 8 and 15 students is appropriate. You might also want to find out whether the course provides one-to-one tutorials: a programme that offers individual tuition as part of its provision has obvious advantages over one that doesn’t.

  Who Are the Teachers?

  These will be writers, often well-known ones. The short courses tend to draw on a wide range of writers, ringing the changes each year. University departments are likely to have a stable core of full-time creative writing staff, often augmented by part-time tutors; again, all are likely to be practising writers.

  It’s worth looking closely at the published work of these tutors before making your decision: if you like the work of a particular writer, it’s probable that you will enjoy the classes he or she teaches.

  A word of warning, however: the presence of a particular writer’s name on the list of a university department’s teaching staff is no guarantee that he or she will be teaching extensively (or even at all) on the course you sign up for. If this matter is important to you, be sure to make the necessary enquiries in advance.

  A tutor’s publishing profile is a significant indicator but not the only one. In the case of university courses, it’s important to be taught by appropriately qualified tutors: academic qualifications don’t outweigh creative achievements, but if good writers are also academically well qualified they are likely to be in a stronger position to offer academic guidance.

  How Will I Benefit?

  As I suggested in my introduction, it’s conceivable that the benefits of creative writing study will be tangible and obvious; but even if you don’t end up with a contract for your novel or poetry collection, you’re likely to have benefited in other ways. As a student on a creative writing course, you’ll usually be expected to produce work by a particular time or date. This may sound intimidating, even restrictive, but it can actually be surprisingly empowering to know that other people are waiting to see your work. And then there’s the feedback you get on that work – not to mention the feedback you’ll be invited to give to other members of your group: again, this may seem intimidating at first, but as your critical awareness develops, you’ll find yourself appreciating the subtleties of the writing process in new and increasingly sophisticated ways.

  The ability to write and speak well is an immensely important social and professional skill. Many employers are, for obvious reasons, interested in job applicants with well-developed powers of expression, while social relationships almost invariably benefit from the participants’ ability to say what they mean in suitably nuanced language. A well-taught course in creative writing will, at the very least, offer you fresh insights into language and the ways in which we use it; it will almost certainly heighten your awareness of the world around you and help you to express that awareness; and it’s always possible that – as with any serious programme of study – it will radically change your life.

  LEARNING TO WRITE

  A Guide to What you Can and Can’t be Taught

  Simon Brett

  Is it possible to teach anyone to write? The answer to that question would have to be no. You can’t teach anyone to write. If the person has no interest in or aptitude for writing, then the task is impossible. And even when you’re dealing with people who are motivated, there is still a question mark over whether they can actually be taught.

  I speak as someone who has spent a lot of time conducting creative writing classes. I have been a tutor for the Arvon Foundation, I have led workshops in libraries and at literary festivals. I have taught courses in rural France and on the Greek island of Skyros. I have even run a week of workshops on short-story writing in Nigeria. And yet I’m still ambivalent about whether writing can be taught.

  One thing I’m certain of, though, is that an experienced writer can facilitate the work of an aspiring writer. You can save people time; you can stop them from pursuing their craft in directions that will prove unrewarding. For example, you can point out that, however good a 72-minute radio play someone has written may be, there are no slots on BBC radio for 72-minute plays. Or you can gently suggest that writing a novel about a writer with writer’s block is possibly not the most rewarding route to travel. Often all you’re doing is giving aspiring writers a bit of confidence in their own abilities. Above all, you can encourage them in the belief that the ambition to write is not an unnatural one.

  In the various courses I’ve conducted, I have observed that the participants get at least as much stimulus from each other as they do from the tutors. A few people grow up in literary families or even dynasties, but for the great majority wanting to write is a slightly unusual aspiration and feeling that urge can sometimes lead to a sense of isolation. Just being with other people who share the ambition has a very liberating effect.

  The prerequisite for any writer must be the desire to write. At school most students will at one stage or another have been set a creative writing task. For the majority the demand was sheer purgatory, for the few it was a moment of great excitement and liberation. The same majority would regard continuing to do such homework for the rest of one’s life as a bizarre and masochistic concept. But for someone who wants to do it, writing offers an unrivalled sense of power when it’s going well (and an unrivalled sense of despair when it’s going badly).

  Improving Your Skills

  There is no lack of titles in the creative writing section of bookshops, but it’s a striking fact that few of them seem to have been written by people you’ve ever heard of. The cruel question inevitably arises: if you know so much about the subject, why aren’t you writing your own bestsellers rather than ‘How To’ manuals? So I’m afraid I don’t have that much faith in books on creative writing.

  The exception I would make to this general rule concerns works by William Goldman, screenwriter of The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and many other great films. His two books, Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?, are full not only of good jokes but also of great wisdom about the business of writing for the cinema – wisdom that applies to a lot of other literary forms too.

  What I would recommend an aspiring writer to read, however, is as much fiction as they can lay their hands on. Read good writing, read bad writing – work out for yourself what the difference is. Read classics, read potboilers, read so-called literary fiction, read genre fiction – you will learn something from every word of it. Decide why you like some authors and dislike others, why some books are crystal clear and others deeply muddled. Identify the qualities you would like to see in your own writing and then try to reproduce them.

  Seeking Help

  That invaluable basis of broad reading may, however, still need to be built on by some form of teaching. So where should the aspiring writer turn for help in developing his or her skills? The answer, of course, depends on how much time the individual wants to invest. Twenty years ago, East Anglia was about the only university in the British Isles which offered a degree course in Creative Writing. Now there is an enormous number to choose from in other universities, and you should assess them from reading prospectuses and talking to people who have experienced them, just as you would choose any other course.

  It should be pointed out, however, that gaining a degree in creative writing offers no guarantee of success in the commercial world of literature. Such training may help focus the energies of a talented writer but it won’t help a no-hoper to get published.

  Anyway, many aspiring writers don’t have the time to devote to a full-time degree course. Most have to hold down a day job while they dream of the bestseller that will one day free them from the thrall of going out to work. For them the solution must be something part-time.

  There are local Writers’ Circles all over the country (information about those in your area can also be found through your library). They are of variable quality but they do offer the aspirant an opportunity to mix with like-mi
nded people. Many also organize programmes of talks by professional writers, from whom useful tips may be gleaned. And the practice of completing set exercises and critiquing each other’s work can be of benefit (though there is always the danger of the same people constantly repeating the same criticisms).

  Short Courses

  Another worthwhile experience for would-be writers who can spare the time is The Writers’ Summer School at Swanwick in Derbyshire. This week-long event has been taking place every August since 1949. It exists, to quote from its website (www.wss.org.uk), ‘to give writers at all levels of experience an opportunity to learn from expert tutors and excellent speakers in a comfortable and friendly atmosphere’. I have tutored and spoken there on many occasions and can vouch for the fact that it is a unique and nurturing environment.

  Many local authorities also run creative writing courses, of which details can be found in libraries or on council websites. The quality of these tends to depend on the quality of the individual tutors involved, and it would be best to do a bit of homework before enrolling.

  Then again, newspapers and magazines are full of advertisements for correspondence courses in creative writing, and there are also plenty to be found on the internet. I have never actually taken one of these myself, but the anecdotal evidence I have gleaned from those who have has not been encouraging. The general view is that the people running them are more concerned with taking your money than with turning you into a better writer.

  The Crème de la Crème

  The best courses I have encountered – and indeed been involved in – are those run by the Arvon Foundation. These take place in four large houses in the country, one in Devon, one in Yorkshire, one in Shropshire and one in Inverness-shire. They usually run from Monday evening till Saturday morning and different weeks concentrate on different aspects of writing – poetry, the novel, short stories, radio, television and soon. There is a maximum of 16 participants on each course, with two professional writers as tutors. The structure of individual courses differs, but generally speaking participants take part in group sessions and workshops, where they are set short writing exercises to be read out at the next session. Among the other valuable components in the programme are one-to-one tutorials with the professional writers. And in the middle of the week there is a visit for one evening from a guest reader, another writer whose work is relevant to the course but whose insights can open up a wider perspective on the subject.

  Arvon’s admission policy is very broad. Basically, places are awarded to the first 16 people who try to book. As a result, there is a wide range of skills and backgrounds among the participants who may vary, in my experience, from published novelists to the man who joined a course of mine ‘because the Spanish course was full’.

  The concentration during these Arvon weeks is intensified by the lack of outside distractions, and the experience of communal living never fails to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Unexpected talents are discovered and developed, and the participants frequently keep in touch with each other once the course has finished. (The participants in my most recent one have set up a Yahoo group and supportive emails are constantly flying back and forth between them.) As a tutor, I always return from a week at Arvon totally exhausted but with the feeling that something worthwhile has been achieved.

  The courses are not cheap but there are various bursaries and grants available for qualifying applicants.

  A final important thing that’s worth saying about writing courses is that they can be just another form of procrastination. The members of no other profession are as skilled as writers in finding things to do other than what they should be doing. Going on a course is a very effective way of postponing the actual putting down of words on the page. As a tutor I have encountered many ‘courseoholics’. More than once, when I have met truly talented people in such circumstances, I have given them one stern piece of advice: ‘Never go on another course. You’ve already got as much as you’re ever going to get from courses. From now on, just write)’

  THE AGENT’S VIEW

  A Guide to Finding and Working with an Agent

  Jonathan Pegg

  If I meet a first-time author with a view to representing them, they often seem hesitant about asking what they can expect from me. Yet there are many elements to this non-secret agency work beyond the licence to lunch imagined by my non-publishing friends, and equally as many considerations that I try to anticipate for the author at such meetings.

  Since the whole purpose of a literary agent is to take care of publishing processes for their client, to the extent that many details can go without saying if an author’s career is in good hands, the important question to begin with is how one agent differs from another. At the same time, the considerations involved in choosing an agent are meaningless without basic prior knowledge of publishing processes. So I have provided a ten-step guide to the least an agent does for their client, hoping to address not just the kinds of questions that first-time authors often have, but also the issue of which are reasonable or realistic questions to ask at an initial meeting.

  Finding and Approaching a Literary Agent

  It can be difficult to secure an agent’s attention in the first place, so to begin with here is a very basic guide to going about that.

  First, look up the websites of the agents listed in the Directory.

  Check that the agency’s commission rates are acceptable to you (see The Agency Agreement).

  Study the agency’s instructions for submitting material. Most will request you to enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope if you would like your material returned to you. A typical instruction for fiction might be to enclose a covering letter, biographical information, one-page synopsis and two or three chapters. Some agencies’ sites go into more detail than I have done here and there is more information about how to prepare a submission.

  It is reasonable to expect a swift acknowledgement. After that, be prepared to wait patiently for a further response – agencies receive a lot of manuscripts and it sometimes takes them up to two months to clear their backlog, although most will try to respond within four to six weeks. If they are potentially interested in taking you on, they should invite you for the introductory meeting I mentioned earlier.

  Ten-Stage Guide to the Agent’s Role

  1. Preliminaries – Content Preparation

  Agents vary in the amount of editorial guidance they will offer. Sometimes they will suggest further work as a prerequisite to formalizing the relationship with a written agreement. If a formal agreement is produced before editorial suggestions have been made, it is reasonable to check whether an agent feels more work will be needed. It may be that they feel the material is ready for submission to publishers – after all, you should have got it into the best possible state before you sent it to them. But if they do think more work will be necessary, it is reasonable to ask roughly how much editorial guidance they will be prepared to give you. I say ‘roughly’ because it’s difficult for an agent to say how much detail they’ll go into without going into the detail itself)

  The Agency Agreement

  Reputable agencies offer a formal contract. This might be offered immediately or at a later date once the agent decides your work is ready for submission to publishers. The agreement is usually subject to a reasonable notice period invoked by either party, since a successful relationship is dependent on mutual enthusiasm. Most agencies charge between 10 and 15 per cent of earnings on deals done in the UK, and 20 per cent on international deals. Most also charge expenses such as photocopying, couriers or ordering finished copies of your book for the purpose of selling subsidiary rights but not phone calls, standard postage or entertaining. It is not advisable to sign with an agent who charges a reading fee or any other sort of fee (including fees if they are unsuccessful in placing your work with publishers).

  2. Submission Strategy

  The agent will decide in due course which publishers, and specifically w
hich commissioning editors, are likely to be interested in – and most suitable for – any particular project. Sometimes an agent will submit a project to one editor at a time; sometimes they will make ‘multiple submissions’. They are unlikely to have decided this until after the initial meeting, and it is probably unrealistic to request too much information about strategy at this stage for two reasons: first, the agent might understandably be reticent about giving away all their ideas before you have committed to them; second, the process does require flexibility.

  Once a project has been submitted by an agent, it may be difficult to find another agent to take it on if it is rejected and the author loses steam, so it is worth trying to ascertain an agent’s likely commitment and perseverance with regard to the project in question. Their response will be necessarily vague because the question of how many publishers they’ll approach may depend on the kind of feedback they get, or indeed a number of circumstances, yet I personally believe it is only fair for an agent to be as clear as possible about their intentions so that you have a rough idea of where you stand with them – are they undertaking to stick with the project to the bitter end if necessary, or will it be a staged process in which they will review their commitment and the valid question of whether it is in your best interests to continue?