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Real Authors Need Death

And then I got cancer. Death threatened, if merely statistically. Suddenly I left the dishes undone, let the washing pile up, declined social invitations, turned my back on my husband in the evenings, ran to the computer to write the second my child was asleep. I completed scenes as I waited for chemotherapy, scribbled plot outlines in the radiotherapist's waiting room, wrote dialogue on the tram, jotted down two-word ideas in a notebook while my car idled at the traffic lights. I wasn't sure where it was taking me, but in the fourth month, on a holiday to give me relief from the relentless treatments, I had an epiphany: it didn't matter to me if I was any good as long as I wrote. The realisation was like a starburst in the dark of a hot, sleepless night in Thailand, and it hasn't left me since.

Because you're not a real writer unless you're dying, obviously.

The article above was written by Jenny Sinclair, a 'real' writer who spends her article telling people that writing courses won't make you a writer, and that you should stop going to them, and they should stop being run. She's currently enrolled at the University of Melbourne and doing an honours year in creative writing.

But of course, unlike her fellow students, Sinclair is not like them! No! She's won a minor literary prize, which, near as I can tell, is in fact the Haddow Stuart Short Story Competition for this story, 'Fourscore'. Winning a competition isn't like winning a literary prize, really, but maybe I'm wrong; that Sinclair's bio lists publications in 'several leading Australian literary journals', but mentions no names, means that one can probably argue that she hasn't done very much indeed. In fact, Sinclair is probably just like the majority of University students involved in creative writing courses, and that is rough, full of shit, and struggling to find a voice that can be called her own. Given that she has spent her time as a journalist, she probably thinks that she has already evolved beyond this, especially because, as she says, "Writing can only be taught up to a point."

Please. Fuck off with that. It's not a valid excuse for anything. It ignores the fact that this is the case for everything. You can only teach cooking up to a point. You can only teach music up to a point. You can only teach to a certain point, and then a student, in whatever field, had to be able to take over for themselves. There's no great secret to that. Inevitably instruction or mentoring or whatever it is that you want to call it will stop being useful. That this happens in literature doesn't make it any kind of special form that must be free of courses, or instruction, or people testing it out, and writing a little and then passing it off. I mean, really, who came up with this I'm-Special-Cause-I-Write-Thing. Writing is just like any other thing you can learn out there--and at the moment, I think People-Who-Can-Surf are special, because sure as shit I can't do it, and there are people who make it look like an art, because they can. But no one is suggesting that surfing shouldn't be taught, and that it should be placed in a secured little tower, and only the blessed few let in.

Besides, you can teach people how to appreciate good fiction in these courses, and then maybe authors like Matthew Reilly will die the literary death they deserve. See, me, I'm not against people wanting to write, or wanting to try it out, or even doing it, no. What I'm against is that banality and sheer stupidity is successful. I say open the doors to everyone! Train them to recognise good material! Train them to reject boring writing!

In short, train them to love what I do.


Feb. 1st, 2007 01:33 am (UTC)
well, you know, sometimes to write you do gotta give up things, like social events and money. but you kinda shouldn't fuck up your personal life for it--it's like any job really.
Feb. 1st, 2007 01:38 am (UTC)
Aye. I mean I think you can safely say the line should have been drawn far before that... cancer, y'know? Dying? Saying "yes, it made me re-evaluate my feelings until I basically said fuck husbands and family, I love my typewriter!" makes a person sound a little odd at best. Heh.
Feb. 1st, 2007 01:43 am (UTC)
yeah, it's strange how nearly dying made her wanna ignore all the living people in her life--but i guess i can understand that. those kinda moments are harsh. but the whole, 'this is what i'm meant to be doing' thing? nah.