Writer's group

A large number of the problems a writer faces can be solved by just one thing: a writer’s group. Last week I met up with a few people from my writing course at St Martins. I took the beginners Creative Writing: Fact or Fiction with Elise Valmorbida last year. The course was excellent and I would recommend it to anyone who fancies themselves as a bit of a writer, or just enjoys doodling a few stories every now and again.

The best part of the course for me was gaining confidence in sharing my work. Before the course I hadn’t shown anyone my writing for years. Not since age nine, when I was the proud recipient of the primary school creative writing shield, had my writing had the opportunity to be mocked and sniggered at by my peers. Or at least that’s what I had imagined would happen. The first class was a nerve-wracking affair, as I pictured a room full of artistic geniuses chain-smoking and making droll comments about literature. Which actually wasn’t far off – the room looked like Topshop and a vintage stall got in a fight (I couldn’t quite say who won). However there was no mockery of any kind. In fact the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and even negative comments were given with a positive spin. Although the skill level in the class was high the assignments took us all out of our comfort zones and some weeks even the most talent writer struggled and the tadpoles excelled.

Several of the girls I took the course with went on to take the intermediate course, but I opted for screenwriting (which turned out to be film studies. Not what I was after at all). I definitely intend to take the intermediate course this autumn, and some students take it over and over as a way of pushing them to produce new work. At £200+ a course doing it every year seems a bit pricey, so the next best thing is taking the class into a bar. Six of us met up in a bar-cum-coffee shop on the top floor of a London bookshop (which we thought apt) and read aloud our most recent pieces. I took the piece of prose I mentioned in my 31st March post, and I have to say it didn’t receive quite the reception I was hoping for. Re-reading the piece now I think all the feedback and advice is actually terribly accurate*. It’s sometimes hard to hear criticism not just because it knocks your confidence, but sometimes because you’ve gotten so attached to a word or phrase that it’s difficult to acknowledge it isn’t suitable. There’s several wordy sentences in the piece that I adore; I love their poetic, polysyllabic nature and the way they languidly roll off my tongue. But they don’t fit. They don’t suit the character, the nature of the story and the rhythm of the piece. So out they come. Next week, when we meet again, I’m going to take a completely edited piece written from the first person instead of the third to make sure I don’t slip into language that speaks from me rather than from the character. And on top of all this you get to have a few glasses of wine with some friendly, interesting people who like what you like.

*I will put the piece into a separate blog entry and tag it as 'writing example'