My blog has gone a little quiet these last months. Many of you know this is because I’ve been taking a creative writing class at Citylit London to focus on my novel. I’ve tremendously enjoyed the course because of my fellow students and expert tutor. Sharing work and receiving feedback pinpoints your style and what you have to work on. And writing is as much about inspiration as about drafting and crafting your pieces over and over again, as I’ve learnt. The best thing about the course, however, is that it has given me the confidence to say that I’m writing a novel and get two months off work to finish it this summer.
The students on the course were as diverse as London – diverse backgrounds, different ambitions and styles. Yet everyone was committed to spend two hours on a Monday night after work and write every week to share their work in class. We started with a 25+ group, but many soon dropped out. Among them were the two Cypriot sisters who had come to support their younger sibling to learn to write letters, the gothic mental health nurse with an attitude and the guy from West Africa who wrote a prayer blog.
So in the second week we settled down with a group of about fifteen, and got to know each other quite intimately through reading our writings. Over the course of 12 weeks, we became used to reading our work to the group and receiving instant feedback. Many were inspired by their family’s migration history – from South African Indian to Bermudan to Jewish and Latvian exiles during the war. Some wrote to make people laugh, others drew upon intimate moments in their (families’) lives. It was a bonding experience bringing together a journalist, mother, psychoanalyst, marketing adviser, council worker, communication adviser, paediatrician, business consultant, television executive.
All this was superbly managed and guided by our tutor, Zoe Fairbairns. One week the non-native speaking council worker read out a poem that repeated ‘When he comes…’ as the first line of every verse. Zoe, with a straight face, suggested that although the girl perhaps did not intend the sexual innuendo, it in fact added an interesting dimension to the poem. She suggested that the girl may want to change one of the lines from ‘When he comes, I sip my latte and smile’ to something more appropriate.
As the course advanced our stories showed that we’d become more skilled in the tricks of the trade, such as the use of metaphor, dialogue, point of view and building suspense and a storyline. Zoe was severe but fair with us, creating a safe environment to grow and giving everyone an equal chance to read their work. She helped us prepare for publication, giving confidence but also making us aware that there may just possibly be fewer people reading than writing books, some of whom may just possible be better than we are.
Yet I’m persevering and am tremendously enjoying writing my novel. It’s now much easier to share my work and receive feedback – as Kingsley Amis said: “A bad review should spoil your breakfast, but not your lunch”. Also I learnt to rewrite pieces over and over again, to kill my darlings and be strict with myself in terms of point of view and use of tenses. The challenge I’ve set myself is to use the minimal amount of words to achieve maximum impact. Ernest Hemingway was a master in this. His writing expresses a lyrical sentation without a lyrical word; a mood of melancholy and languid acceptance without using any such word. Read for example these sentences from two of his short stories:
“The sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain.” – Cat in the Rain
“In the evening they all sat at dinner together in the garden under a plane tree and the evening wind blew and Elliott drank white wine and Mrs Elliott and the girl made conversation and they were all quite happy.” – Mr and Mrs Elliott
This week I heard I was accepted to a writers’ and artists’ retreatin a deserted village high up in the mountains in the Languedoc. I’m looking forward to refining my own style there, and hopefully will publish some of my work on the blog soon. Stay tuned!
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