Comments for susan sellers

Comment on Can you teach creative writing? by Andy

Andy — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:17:10 +0000

I have recently finished the MLitt in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of St Andrews. After eight years in an American university, my experience here was refreshing at least. Our year was a relationship between weekly workshops, fortnightly one-on-one tutorials, and weekly seminars. The seminars were priceless. Topics ranged from ‘Metonymy and Metaphor’ to ‘Poetry and the Spirit’. We constantly looked at examples of poets, current and historical, who were doing all the things we were learning about, and doing it best. There was a unique opportunity to saddle up to the poets who were tutoring us and look in on their interests. I found this to be the best part of the year. We got to listen to them unpack what they had been thinking about, and get their unique perspective and agenda on any given issue. From there we could sort of look in and say, ‘Yeah, I really like that. I want to know more about it.’ or ‘Hmm, that does’t make sense to me. Can you explain it more.’ or even ‘No, I totally disagree.’

I felt not only educated, but also empowered, if I can be so direct. I learned about things I didn’t even know existed. But more than anything else, I was confronted with tremendous amounts of silence and solitude, which forced me into the dark of my midnight desk lamp light to ‘grapple with the guard’ for myself. I think the year for an MLitt is priceless for someone who is looking for a year out to study their craft, or their potential craft. However, I would hold the conviction that it is entirely what you make it. You will get form your tutors what you want from them. You will discover only what you hunt to find.

Comment on Can you teach creative writing? by Sharon

Sharon — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:07:05 +0000

My MA in Creative Writing was disappointing because it had no skills-based courses at all – entirely workshop-driven, and the quality of the comment in many cases not much better than you’d get from the average local writers’ group. A skills-driven approach together with an element of critical commentary (and yes, some workshops too) would be the perfect balance. So few courses provide that. I think the other problem for many courses is lack of proper selection at the beginning. There’s some misguided sense of inclusivity that means they take on a lot of people who had no particular writing talent to begin with (it’s actually NOT that hard to judge, even unhoned…) and those people end up not having much more in the way of talent or skill when they come out of it – but they have an MA… All of which runs the risk of devaluing the whole academic basis of the courses. When (as a publisher) I get a submission from someone with a creative writing MA I no longer assume that at least it’s going to be readable or that there’s any guarantee of quality at all. Truth is, I often flinch! I think it’s so important to teach talented writers-to-be good skills, but so few courses do it well.

Comment on Can you teach creative writing? by maggi

maggi — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:58:00 +0000

that’s really interesting. A friend of mine has just taken a year off work to do a masters in creative writing, and for her the main factor in whether it was going to work for her was who the mentor (tutor) would be – as it was someone she admired, it was a way of getting one of her own writing heroes to give her a year of critique on her writing.
I guess a funded and/or structured year to write is good enough reason to go for it, but what use is a qualification in creative writing unless you are going to write? And what difference does the qualification make in the end? seems to me the value is in whether it hones your skill, not gaining the degree.

Comment on Can you teach creative writing? by Caroline Leavitt

Caroline Leavitt — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:56:11 +0000

Really interesting post. Here in the US, MFAs in creative writing are as common as party nuts. I teach all levels of novel writing at UCLA online. I truly think that talent cannot be taught. Structure and toolbox techniques can, though. And so can discipline, which is why I think a lot of people take these courses. You’re forced to write every week. You’re forced to critique other peoples’ work, which can be invaluable in being able to pick out what does and does not work in your own work–and why. And sadly, getting that degree makes it possible to get a teaching job (those with publications, but no degree, are stuck as lower paying adjuncts.) I suppose this is funny: I hated creative writing courses and took only one, nearly dropping out. But I love teaching it because I love to talk about writing, love to read other peoples’s work, and it does help me in my own work to be able to figure out why my students’ work is not quite there. Plus, I like writers.

Comment on Public and private by maggi

maggi — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:10:44 +0000

great to see you have started a blog! Congratulations!
In my PhD research I did some work on letters, epistolary novels, and so-called “private correspondence”, and concluded that the only form of writing that is genuinely private is a locked diary, written with the genuine intent of privacy (and even then there is the possibility of a lurking thought that the diaries might one day be discovered and published…)
Brian Eno writes in his A Year With Appendices that once he had agreed that his private journal might be published, he immediately started writing it differently.

Comment on Public and private by scs2

scs2 — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:56:17 +0000

Now that’s an interesting thought: what would Woolf have made of Facebook and Twitter?

I suspect she would have hated the illusion of privacy these sites give! After all, she published nothing in her lifetime she did not painstakingly revise and correct.

Speaking for myself, I feel there is something false about the apparent intimacy of these on-line sites, because as a writer you must always be aware that your words can be read by millions. Isn’t there always an aspect of public performance about even our most intimate postings and tweets?

Comment on Public and private by janeyolen

janeyolen — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:25:47 +0000

Of course these days, with people spewing out their private thoughts and sexual pictures in twitter speak and on FaceBook and online journals (I am as guilty as anyone else) there is little concern of the privacy of such jottings.

One wonders what Virginia W and her cohorts would have felt about such things. Would they have leaped into the twitter fray? Or the frayed twitterings? Or returned to their private (they thought) diaries where they could make cutting remarks without fear of exposure. At least as long as they were alive.

Jane