University courses in creative writing have become ever more common, in both
the US and the UK.
But are they worth it? Personally, I'm sceptical. I think most people who do
such courses are let down by them. I think the teaching is often far too
removed from the market, and the writers who graduate are often hopelessly
underprepared for market realities.
In the first place, it's important to realise that agents and publishers
couldn't care a damn about your academic qualifications. My degree is in
economics. I spent ten years working as an investment banker. There was nothing
in my history to suggest I had any talent at creative writing - and no one
cared. There's only one aptitude test which matters and that's whether you can
write a good book.
Yes, it is true that agents will tend to stay in close touch with various
creative writing schools, watching for emerging talent. But so what? The most
that'll do is ease your path into the industry. But if your book is good
enough, and you're not a total numpty about finding agents, you'll secure
representation anyway.
The killer question then is this: will university creative writing courses
help you launch a career in writing? Or rather - because any course will teach
you something - are those courses effective ways of teaching you what needs to
be learned?
And that's where I have a problem. In particular, creative writing courses
typically teach you how to write short stories and poetry and novels /
novellas. You'll get better at all these things. But there's no market to speak
of for short stories, or poetry, or novellas. If you actually want a career as
a writer, they're irrelevant.
What's more, creative writing courses are typically excellent at teaching
how to write prettily - because that's easily done in a classroom / workshop -
but they're lacklustre at teaching plot and story. Those things are hard to
handle, precisely because they're so big. You can't properly critique a plot
without reading a whole damn book and working through it piece by piece. If the
plot doesn't work, the book has to be rewritten - then re-read, re-analysed,
re-evaluated. Because these things are time-consuming, plot is often woefully
neglected.
Which is madness! Plot and story are by far the things that matter most to
agents and publishers. Get the story wrong, and no matter how much else you do
right, your work is probably unsaleable. Plot and story should be the main
focus of any creative writing course worth its salt.
And then too, I think way too many MA / MFA courses are desperately unrealistic
about what kind of work is saleable. I have never, for example, come across any
such course which has been good at teaching genre fiction: crime, thrillers,
chick lit, and the like. And that's bananas too! No, scratch that, not just
bananas - it's snobbish and stupid.
Good genre fiction is quite simply damn good writing. It deserves proper
teaching as much as anything else. One of my first editorial clients came to me
after having completed a two year creative writing course at a highly respected
university. He had written a thriller - clever, stylish, nasty, memorable. But
it wasn't right. It spent too much energy on the style, too little on the
thriller.
I helped that client out with a couple of editorial reviews. Quite simple
stuff, actually. The writer had piles of talent and a great concept. The things
that needed fixing were fairly obvious, fairly fixable. But why the heck was I
providing that feedback? Why hadn't this guy's tutors already told him what he
needed to know?
He said that they were all literary writers who didn't relate to what he
wanted to do and had hardly ever read the full length manuscript. For my money,
that's pathetic. Inexcusable. (Oh, and we got that writer a top quality agent
within weeks of his having finished his final edit with us. That shows how
badly his course failed him.)
And even if your interest is in writing literary fiction, I'm doubtful
whether most courses will set you on the right track. Fifteen years ago, there
was a market for the 'slim' literary novel. You got paid GBP5,000 / USD 5,000
for it. It sold 200 copies in hardback. It sold 3000 copies in paperback. It
got some nice reviews. No one made any money. After two or three such novels,
everyone agreed that enough was enough and the author's career drew to a close.
That just doesn't happen now - and shouldn't. Novels need to command an
audience. The best debuts are loud, unforgettable, attention-seeking things:
Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Audrey Niffenegger's Time Traveler's Wife, Jonathan
Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated. That's what agents are looking for.
Those are the books that can launch a career. Those are the things that MA /
MFA courses should be teaching.
Yet the tutors - at least 90% of them - have never written
such a book themselves. They've written short stories, published poetry, sold
slim literary novels of their own... and never engaged with the industry the
way that most MA / MFA writers want to engage with it themselves.