On Learning. And on learning again - by Rowena House

This month I bought two more writing advice guides: On Editing by Helen Corner-Bryant and Kathryn Price, and Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott, both of which I’ve been meaning to read for ages.

The contrasts between them are remarkable; you’d be forgiven for thinking they aren’t about the same subject at all.

On Editing is practical, clear, logical and full of excellent editing advice, like how to develop a Show Not Tell mindset, how and why to control viewpoint, and classic ways of plotting your story’s shape.

 

Bird By Bird is personal, wise, endearing, and full of excellent creative writing advice about the importance of not taking yourself too seriously, of finishing whatever small portion of a story you’ve started, of silencing inner critics, of freeing your imagination.

 

 

Devouring them both, it became clear that On Editing is the right book for me as a mentor for writers seeking publication, but I dithered about whether Lamott’s vision might be more relevant to where I am at the moment as a writer: i.e. starting over.

Again.

(Yup, I know. Sadly, after a year or so exploring the WWII story I’ve blogged about before, I found I didn’t believe in it enough to keep on keeping on. Never mind. There are galaxies of stories out there, and we only need to discover one star.)

Anyhow, if you’re a writer you’ve no doubt discovered long since that there is no ‘right’ way to write a story. This is a truism of our business. We each do what we do. Plot or not. Start with a hunch or refine a premise. Run with an obsession. Fall in love with a character. Ask What If…?

After a decade of attending writing courses, and running them myself, this tenet of individuality had come to seem rather obvious and run-of-the-mill. Trite, even. I certainly thought I knew myself: I plot, I structure, I edit. Guides like On Editing, Story and Into the Woods were the books for me. Then…

I attempted to teach creative writing skills to young people who weren’t remotely interested in the subject (!) but had, nonetheless, to write an original story for their exams. In the classroom, all the received wisdom, all the insights about creativity I’d gained over the years seemed to count for naught.

My enthusiasm for conflict, for protagonists, for rising tension and turning points simply didn’t translate into 450-600 word coherent narratives, with varied sentence structures, and good spelling, punctuation and grammar, to be written in 45 minutes.

Worse still, my research into effective ways of teaching creative writing in schools and colleges unearthed an alarming amount of academic evidence that professional writers teaching in class have statistically insignificant effects on official measurements of pupil attainment and progress.

 [It was a relief to read the Literacy Trust’s report (link below) which showed author visits do have positive benefits for literacy, but that report came too late to offer any comfort during my teacher training year.]

Suitably humbled, and with a brand new toolkit marked “author visitor”, I’ve now returned to the realm of the writer with renewed appreciation for the magic and wonder of the creative process. What a gift it is to be able (eventually) to say what you mean, and shape that into a story worth sharing.

It no longer seems to matter a jot whether one writes methodically, with a guide like On Editing to hand, or as a free spirit, completing each nugget Bird by Bird. What to write remains a big question, of course. But how to write it? Any damn way you please.

https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/impact-writer-visits-children-and-young-peoples-literacy-engagement/

 

The F word: Failure Maeve Friel

This weekend Children´s Books Ireland are holding their  24th annual conference at the Light House Cinema in Dublin with a glittering array of national and international speakers. It will kick off with the inaugural address of the new Irish Children´s Laureate, Laureate na nóg, Eoin Colfer. The conference has always been a stimulating and inspiring and fun highlight  of the year for writers, illustrators, booksellers, teachers, librarians and all lovers of children´s literature.

This year the chosen theme, the F word: Failure - is intriguing. The programme says they are inviting writers “to reflect on the times in their careers where things have fallen apart, deadlines went out the window and defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory.” What do you do when you are turned down by agent after agent? How do you get past the fear of failure?  How do you keep going if your books are no longer finding a publisher (perhaps after years of regular commissions)? And how do you find the true grit and determination to turn the failures into triumphs, to keep going when no one actually has asked you to write in the first place?  Will a book award pave the way automatically to a successful and lasting career? No doubt there will be many thoughtful discussions and a lot of laughs too. I am terribly sorry that I am so “scattered” that I will not be there.

At times when my work in progress gets stuck  or I am failing to meet a deadline, I sometimes look to the wisdom of other writers and the many lists of tips and advice out there. But the one I find the wisest and the most entertaining is Anne Lamont´s timeless advice in her book “Bird by Bird”:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

Bird by bird – that´s the way to do it. Just write the next sentence and carry on until you have finished.