On Not Feeling Guilty About Not Writing – by Rowena House

Confession: when my forehead is bleeding over a particularly stubborn scene, I find some of the motivational quotes which punctuate my Twitter feed deeply irritating. One that bugs me more than most is attributed to Ray Bradbury: ‘You only fail if you stop writing.’

Now I’ll bet £20 and a curry that, in context, this quote makes a good point.

[A few years ago I watched a great hour-long speech by Ray Bradbury to US creative writing students – via a link in one of Candy Gourlay’s ever-informative blogs – in which he had many brilliant things to say, including a recommendation to write one short story a week on the grounds that no one can write 52 rotten stories per year.]

But the mantra ‘You only fail if you stop writing’ is often taken to mean that we must keep plugging away regardless; we shouldn’t get up from our computers until we’ve reached a minimum daily word count; the muse must strike between nine-to-five or whatever time of day we’re chained to our desks, etc. etc.

All of which advice may well help many people keep going.

So why do I instinctively rebel?

In that time-honoured tradition of seeking evidence to support one’s intuitions, rather than challenging them with uncomfortable data, I’ve been on the hunt for reasons to justify my gut reaction.

The search bore fruit.

Ironically, the first clue came from an article entitled Inspiration for Slackers in the latest edition of Bath Spa University’s magazine. In it, Lucy Jolin quotes Nick Sorensen, Associate Dean at the Institute for Education, talking about the ‘reflective practitioner’ in education.

I recognised this theory of education from my days at Bath Spa on their fab MA in writing for young people. Reflective commentaries on different elements of our writing processes were an important part of that course, and this reminder made me realise that part of my hostility to “plugging away regardless” probably stemmed from this training.

As far as I understand it, reflective practice presupposes that being good at something requires practice. [Back to that famous 10K hours of practice to become an expert in your chosen field.] But it also says that even when we do something well, we won’t necessarily be able to repeat that success unless we know what’s so great about it, and how we achieved it. Ditto for things that don’t work.

Thus, unless we give ourselves the time and space to analyse our writing, we will remain at the mercy of inspiration, which (imo) is actually the route to becoming a slave to perspiration.

This small epiphany led to more general thoughts about the evolution of a book I’ve been working on (off and on) for more than four years, into which I’ve poured much that I love as well as things that I fear, moments that have shocked me, things that have bought great joy and others deep sadness.

In other words, it’s about life with all its ups and downs.

So I reckon another reason for my instinctive mistrust of the idea of obsessing over words for too long in the lonely garrets of our minds is an underlying belief that we need to live life whole-heartedly in order to write well.

Other people have, of course, made this point many times before, including Stephen King, who put it succinctly: ‘Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way round.’   

Rowena House

Twitter: @HouseRowena

 

 

Training the 21st Century Authors - Ruth Hatfield

A while ago, I was asked if I’d like to do some author training. Author training? I already knew how to be an author (Step one: boil kettle…) But this was training to do author events. I’m pretty terrified of doing author events, and glad of any help to soothe those nerves. So I attended the 21stCentury Authors programme, run by the National Literacy Trust in partnership with Author Profile and Arts Council England.

The idea was to equip us with some basic skills that authors (particularly children’s authors) might find useful when doing events for their readership. As with the rest of the writing career stuff, I’d sort of assumed that I’d have to make this up as I went along. The idea of getting formal training to talk about my book seemed a bit bizarre, but when we got down to it, I was surprised that this sort of course doesn’t seem to be more widely available to authors. It gave me a huge amount of useful, practical advice, that I think most authors would find both helpful and confidence-boosting.

The first workshop was about creating an event – we were asked to think about why we might like to do events, and what an audience member might hope for from us. We had to consider the idealistic, educational and business aspects of events, then we had to think about which ideas from our books we might like to discuss, and pick a single one to stand and enthuse about. We had to plan the phases of our event, down to the minute. While this might not suit the author who is a natural at giving entertaining speeches completely ad hoc, it’s very useful for those of us who prefer something to lean on if we’re standing in front of a room of restless but eager kids. The idea was that tight planning gives you a structure from which you can deviate if you want to, but which helps you keep the basic core of an event clear and easy to follow.

The second workshop was on performance techniques. That was something I’d never given any thought to – nobody had ever pointed out to me that if you put your book between you and your audience, it actually gets in the way (I think I tend to do this purposefully, in order that I can hide behind the book). But put the book lower down and turn sideways, and your audience gets the story, straight from you. Prepare. Gargle. Warm up your voice. Make eye contact with your audience when you enter – it’s all stage stuff, for actors. But it makes a huge difference to how well your audience connects with you, so whatever you’re talking about – books or astrology or the ingredients of a fidget pie – if you’re warm, relaxed and confident, they’ll probably find you more engaging.

The last workshop was about how to manage your events – how to negotiate with the people who are hiring you, how to work with groups of different sizes, how to structure your visits, legal stuff, etc etc... All very technical, but to be taken step by step through the whole process – what bliss!

Equipped with our new skills, we were given the opportunity to do a gig – I was lucky enough to be sent to Leicester City FC, to do one of their ‘stadium days’, where groups from local schools come in for author talks and tours round the stadium. It was my first insight into the work of the brilliant Premier League Reading Stars programme. I wanted to do writing workshops slightly based on my first book – in my head I just assumed that the kids would find this fun (who wouldn’t find writing fun?), and it would show them that not all writing was work. Was I right? The majority of the kids took pity on me and gave it a go. And they came up with some great stuff – llamas fell down chimneys, people fell down toilets, and a couple of the teachers came up to me afterwards and said that they’d done the exercises and enjoyed them too.

The whole author training experience was overwhelmingly positive for me – they were effectively saying, if you are an author nowadays, a good way to make a career is also to think of yourself as a performer. But they recognise that people who want to sit and write books aren’t always naturals at getting up in front of dozens of people and proclaiming how great their books are, hence the idea of specialised author training.

I wonder why it hasn't been more widely available before. Probably because this is a new world for authors, in which they need new skills to survive. And although that sounds a bit doom-laden – it’s actually, I think, a wonderful thing that authors are being pushed out of their turrets and into the hands of their readership. I find it terrifying to contemplate doing events, but as I make my characters face terror and walk through fire all the time – it’s probably a good thing to keep reminding myself what fear feels like!