After a certain amount of talk about what we might do, I set a writing exercise and send people off on their own. This surprises and terrifies some students, who expected only to listen. There’s a rush of anxiety in the room. Some people haven’t brought pens or paper; one person leaves for good.
Soon there is silence; everyone is working. I try always to have the students write something, however rough, in the workshop. Plenty can be done in twenty minutes’ concentrated writing. But sometimes the warm-up ‘discussions’ — of the relation between craft and talent, of movies, or of what it is like to be male or female — can go on for an hour or more. It is difficult to plan the work these groups will do as you never know what will stimulate people. Recently, we began talking about men as fathers and ended up talking about parents and children, particularly a parent’s failure to see or understand the ‘real’ nature of the kid. After a while this seemed to reconnect with writing, with the urge, later in life, to put your side of the story; to speak in order to have others know you when once you were encouraged to remain silent. Schools, too, in my day, and for many of the people in the workshop, were basically authoritarian. You remained — mostly — silent, and information was put into you, which you retained until the exams. The pupil was of no interest in herself, except as a receptacle.
Some people turn to writing in order to locate an identity; they even feel that if they don’t do something like this, they will disintegrate.
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Can writing be taught? There is usually strong feeling about this question, with some derision on both sides, even as more writing courses are being developed. I guess people want to know where this particular talent, or any talent for that matter, originates; how it got to be a talent in the first place, who put it there or what can be done with it. I like to reply: ‘I don’t know, but we’ll meet once a week anyway.’
Certainly there are discussions about writing, and about trying to make anything new, which are worth having, which can be constructive and even improving. This, it seems to me, is plenty. The problem with the writing schools, or with over-academic writing courses, is that they have too narrow a notion of competence and tend only to choose the best students. What would happen if such an idea was abandoned altogether? I wouldn’t even say that talent is important. The less accomplished writers and the novices are no less interesting than the brilliant ones. It is moving to see someone speak when they hardly dared before. Who can say what anyone will produce in the future? Who doesn’t have something to say? Why fetishise talent or approve most of those who please their teacher?
The idea, really, is to be inspiring; to make others see, through one’s enthusiasm, that this is worth doing. Of course people have to understand this themselves; if they don’t, there’s nothing there and the teacher only demonstrates his intelligence while the learning is superficial. Can the teacher do anything? Is she necessary? Why not have a ‘leaderless’ group?
Most of the time it is not that the writer can’t write, it’s that she can’t find out whether she can write or not. She can’t get that far because she is held up by herself and her history, by the external and internal fears which crowd her as she puts pen to paper, standing in the way of real development. The teacher is an alternative or auxiliary voice, which helps the student make an arrangement with herself to continue despite her doubts, an arrangement which will let the student’s natural abilities evolve without crippling inhibition.
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Early on there was an exercise that appealed to the class. It wasn’t something I’d prepared, but developed out of talking about writers who use alternative names, for instance Stephen King / Richard Bachman, Ruth Rendell / Barbara Vine. In the exercise you write under a pseudonym, as if you were someone else, or as if you were an actor ‘freed-up’ in a mask. Who would you write like if you were liberated from the necessity of being yourself, if you could inhabit your strangest parts without believing you will turn into that person? In the spirit of Miles Davis’s remark, ‘There are no wrong notes in jazz,’ it seemed important to encourage people to bring their worst selves to the page. Of course the idea of a ‘second’ or ‘shadow’ self is one which has been explored by writers as diverse as Poe, Dostoevsky, Stevenson and Maupassant.
‘Remember, you are many,’ was the note I gave them. Initially, people thought just ‘the bad stuff ’ would come out, that their concealed desire would be abhorrent and they would discover only nightmares. One man began the exercise and immediately found his thoughts repellent, as he ‘turned’ into a rapist. His own ‘darkness’ was so agitating and his belief that once in it he’d never return so strong, he refused to continue the exercise and had to walk around the building until he calmed down. ‘Saints can’t write novels,’ I said, unhelpfully.
For others, this disguised speaking of hatred, fury and longing had a surprising and considerable energy in it. Whatever their fears, most people seemed to feel that they had at least discovered something they could use — a new position to write from, for instance; something they would return to, and couldn’t find any other way.
Ted Hughes: ‘Writers have invented all kinds of “games” to get past their own censorship … One thing such games have in common is a willingness to relax expectation, and to experiment, to let flow — a willingness to put on masks and to play.’
The writer here isn’t attempting to find his voice, as if there were one such thing to find, but is discovering multiple inflections and the numerous attitudes it is possible to write from without wholly identifying with any of them.
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When I set an exercise, I encourage the writers to read out the results. This can feel embarrassing and students are not compelled to do it. For some people, being heard can be harder than being ignored. However, it can be illuminating to hear yourself read in front of a small audience. The story will change as it reaches the light. If you are able to listen to yourself, you will hear the false notes and will, probably, stumble over them. The bad bits will leap out. As you go you will revise in your head.
The other day I read one of my own stories to the class, a story I thought, or hoped, was finished. To my surprise I received a good deal of criticism, most of which was helpful. Misunderstandings and the need for more detail were pointed out. Nothing holds up a story more than lack of clarity and this is not something you would always be able to notice yourself. I went home chastened.
There is a letter by Robert Lowell in which he says, ‘I’d been doing a lot of reading aloud. I went on a trip to the West Coast and read at least once a day and sometimes twice for fourteen days, and more and more I found that I was simplifying my poems. I’d make little changes just impromptu as I read.’
The disadvantage of reading aloud is that it can encourage unnecessary irony and whimsy. The reader likes an instant response; he wants only to entertain and is afraid of a more subtle engagement with an audience. Reading aloud can also force writers to make too much sense of their ideas too early, foreshortening a productive mad rambling — an over-spilling of ideas, memories, day-dreams, night-dreams, images, fantasies, random thoughts and feelings — which might be more generative if continued.
A few weeks into the workshop I am aware of my own impatience. I’m beginning to wonder whether the work of this group is as good as that of other groups I’ve run and whether — and this must be any teacher’s or writer’s worry — other people really want that which is being offered. Of course, only parts, perhaps only a fragment of what you say will be important, just as certain parts of any work of art, or poem — perhaps only a section, paragraph or image — will resonate for a reader. But already I want them to be better writers. Why bother with a workshop otherwise? Or is it only certain sorts of writing that I like or want? Has my taste become too particular? Anyhow, I feel dyspeptic, sour and old. I remember seeing this in some teachers at schooclass="underline" for them, as a pupil, you were a failure already; just being a kid at all was a kind of weakness for them. I have to remind myself to be demanding without becoming destructive of hope. I don’t want to be as hard on them as I can be on myself. But how can the teacher not reproduce with his students the relationship he has with himself?