wotiwrote

The debate about whether or not you can teach creative writing seems fairly pointless to me. As with everything, if there are those who feel they need to be taught and there are also those who feel they would like to teach, then why not bring the parties together and let them get on with it. Any success or failure will always be measured in an almost infinite variety of ways, depending on the hopes and ambitions of the student and the teacher. Something published? Something finished? New friends? New writers discovered? Ego boosted? All these are valid goals.

For me it has always been a case of trying to find a way to conquer my inner critic. This is really a case for a therapist rather than a writing tutor. I've been reading widely and intensely since I was very young and I've never felt daunted by the idea of plot or dialogue or character. These seem to be the givens of any desire to write. It comes down to the practice of the craft. In my early thirties I finally swallowed my pride - or got less snooty about such things - and picked up some books on writing. They disappointed because they never seemed to go beyond the mechanics. Point of view, plot structure etc. Yawn.

It was Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird that was the first book that spke of the inner torments as much as the basic skills. This is probably the only book an aspiring author should need over and above a library of great writing. I wish I had read it when I was in my teens. Given that Annie Lamott is only a few years older than me, this is a doubly useless wish.

For someone rendered paralysed by living and breathing Ulysses and Dubliners from my late teens, Lamott's notion of the shitty first draft was uniquely liberating. The book also oozes great humour and she writes like a cross between your best mate and Kurt Vonnegut. (Apologies if Mr. Vonnegut happens to be your best mate.) There's this from a chapter called "Radio Station KFKD":

If you're not careful, station KFKD will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one's specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn't do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touces turns to shit, that one doesn't do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on.

Every line Lamott writes reveals her to be writing for the writer rather than trying to create another 'How-to' book. More than anything, 'Bird by Bird' is a first aid manual.

And the humour? She goes on to talk about how to switch off the radio station (pronounced "K-fucked", of course):

You might also consider trying to breathe. This is not something that I remember to do very often, and I do not normally like to hang around people who talk about slow conscious breathing; I start to worry that a nice long discussion of aromotherapy is right around the corner.

Side-splitting? Hardly. Just what's needed? Exactly.