Writing - A fine art to master
published: Wednesday | May 5, 2004

By Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

THE GLEANER continues its coverage of the Calabash International Literary Festival 2004 seminars held at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Mona campus, on Saturday. A report was also carried in yesterday's paper.

The topic discussed was 'Can You really Teach Creative Writing?' and the panellists were Barbara Gloudon (playwright and communication consultant), Sharon Leach (fiction writer and columnist), Mervyn Morris (poet and literary critic), Deborah Williams (regional community relations manager, Barnes and Noble) and David Winn (assistant professor, Hunter College), who counts host of all three seminars and Calabash founder Colin Channer among his former students.

The usefulness of workshops, the components of a hypothetical writing course for the University of the West Indies and a discussion on the MFA (Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing) degrees offered in the United States were covered in the second seminar on Saturday.

However, it was the 'no holds barred' approach of Barbara Gloudon that was the spark of the mid-morning session.

"Talent is an incredible gift. The trick is hard work. Many of our writers suffer from this virus 'I will not write it again'," Gloudon said, her expression underlining what a terrible infection can be.

"Then the talent becomes a virus. Talent can be a terrible virus," she said.

While Mervyn Morris said that people can be taught to write, it was a matter of what is meant by teaching, saying it was a matter of 'helping people write better'.

Workshops, it seemed, were both the blessing and bane of the writer's existence.

"What a workshop does is it offers authors a sense of how hard writing can be. It is exhausting, but the rewards are great," David Winn said.

ATMOSPHERE

"You hopefully establish the kind of atmosphere where people can be quite candid. One of the key things in workshop activity is that misunderstanding can be very helpful," Morris said.

Sharon Leach was able to give a personal insight into the workshop experience.

"You come to the workshop and think it is a masterpiece and they tear it apart. You have to have the courage to go back - As a writer it is a solitary life. You are in front of your computer and you think you are making great headway. When you do put it out to people some do not get it and you have to make it clearer," she said.

For her first workshop, Deborah Williams carried along some published pieces. "They tore it to shreds," she said.

"I am still struggling to find my voice. I am still reticent about going to workshops," she said.

Saying that there are over 200 MFA programmes offered in the United States, Winn gave the good and bad of the proliferation. "I think they are a blessing. They offer access of literature to people who would never think of that. (However), there is a sort of danger in producing a cookie cutter writer," he said.

"Just as there is danger of ending up in a toxic workshop," he added, speaking of abuse being hurled around.

"I do not know why picking up a pen or sitting in front of a computer is a more sacred art than using your body or putting pigment on canvas," Winn said, remarking on the sort of elevated status that writing is held in.

Barbara Gloudon noted that there is even a picket fence, between 'writer' and 'creative writer'. When it was pointed out that there are also fine artists and house painters, Gloudon said "what the country need is some good house painters."

There was applause.

Before saying what he would like to see in a hypothetical writing course at the UWI, Morris expressed the reservation that MFAs are heavily academic and writing is just a small part. "Sometimes people who have the talent benefit, but some do not," he said.

As such, if he was involved in setting up a writing course at UWI, he would "try to ensure that it is heavily based on creative output". This is in addition to learning basics such as the history of the novel.

Gloudon said that "I would like to see that my students have a wider knowledge of a wider world".

"I would say to the creative artist open your eyes and sensibilities to the world. You will find that your tributary to the river will come, but your river is flowing to a greater thing," she said.

THE RIGHT STUFF

Channer pointed to the expense of an MFA, saying that many persons go in because some teachers are well connected, 'so it can become a factory system'. Before putting down US$30,000 to do an MFA, one would be well advised to assess if they have the 'right stuff'. To this end, he asked the panellists 'what does talent look like?'

For Morris, it is freshness, giving deceased poet Mikey Smith as an example. He had; "a remarkable sort of rhythmic facility that was highly organised, images and allusions that kept flashing by interestingly and a focused determination in saying things about oppression".

Gloudon spoke of a sense of originality, although noting that it is getting harder to identify talent, what with plagiarism and the Internet.

For Sharon Leach it is engagement and for Deborah Williams it is "The ability of the writer to tell a story, even if the subject matter of the story is totally unfamiliar".