The novelist and professor Hanif Kureishi has voiced criticism of creative writing courses – and having been on one, I find it hard to disagree.
Hanif Kureishi has declared that creative writing courses are a waste of time and that most of the people enrolled are talentless (and as he teaches on one, presumably he should know). As an alumna of such a programme, I’d love to say that I was – what is it that politicians say? – ‘dismayed’ by his comments, or that they were ‘unfortunate’, but actually, I think he is probably right.
My overriding memory of studying creative writing is of sitting in a room without air-con in high summer, listening to the ululating sound of my desk partner’s hearing aid, while we ‘workshopped’ passages from students’ opening chapters for three hours or so. All I could think of at the time was that I probably would have learned a lot more by rereading Tender Is the Night, or firing off submissions.
Of course, there’s something to be said for Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” maxim, or Beckett’s “fail again, fail better”; and practising something, if it doesn’t make perfect, will at least make for improvements. But do you really need to pay thousands of pounds a year for somebody to tell you that?
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My overriding memory of studying creative writing is of sitting in a room without air-con in high summer, listening to the ululating sound of my desk partner’s hearing aid, while we ‘workshopped’ passages from students’ opening chapters for three hours or so. All I could think of at the time was that I probably would have learned a lot more by rereading Tender Is the Night, or firing off submissions.
Of course, there’s something to be said for Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” maxim, or Beckett’s “fail again, fail better”; and practising something, if it doesn’t make perfect, will at least make for improvements. But do you really need to pay thousands of pounds a year for somebody to tell you that?
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1 comment:
Two prerequisites: If you want to write then you first need to read, and read lots - you don't get inspiration in a vacuum. And regardless of whether it's fiction or non-fiction, you need a good knowledge and understanding of what you're writing about.
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