The Balance of Work and Life
Summary: |
Jon Stone writes about studying on the MA in English Literature with Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia with tutor Paul Magrs.
|
Posted: |
09 Jan 2004 |
Education Group: |
Higher Education |
|
|
 |
|
"Look out, Getachew - he's making notes on us."
So said my travelling companion to our Ethiopian friend when I started to write in my notebook in the middle of a coffee ceremony. The conversation stopped, and people looked at each other, mildly embarrassed, awaiting my next move. Now of course, I only intended to scrawl a line of dialogue for possible inclusion in a novel, but the point hit neatly home. Even in East Africa, in the middle of the summer break, kitted out in sunglasses and sandals and with no one but no one looking over my shoulder, I'd been caught working, indulging in a pinch of creative writing. At a social gathering, no less; at an ancient and unique Ethiopian ritual, the kind regular travellers wax and rave about to their family for weeks. And in fact, I'd been busily writing almost every night of the trip so far, often under mosquito nets with a torch. I'd brought a blank notebook of rough, yellow paper bound in card and dried leaves, and sworn to fill it completely before I went home. Every detail that caught my eye crept onto paper in some form or another. Poems were drafted and re-drafted, stories planned out, metaphors listed for future reference. That's how closely I stick to the plan, to the course outline. It bleeds into everything, even my once in a lifetime holiday adventure.
All students are, naturally, encouraged to balance work and life with a serious and dutiful eye. I remember an old headmaster urging his sixth form to lock away their guitars, cars and girlfriends on the eve of A Level examinations. I recall too the derisive raised eyebrows that greet any mention of a recommended number of hours per week to devote to study. Clearly, most students, even in higher education, know the difference between working and not working. And as far as the literature part of my degree goes, I know that too.
But creative writing is different. You can't sit down and work for a set number of hours every day, forget about it the rest of the time, and hope to produce satisfactory results. Any kind of rhythm, even the thousand words a day that I was told I should aim for, is difficult to keep, and there are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, you have a strong sense of what you are aiming for. Few young adults (indeed, few older ones) follow closely the exchange or volley of essays in the academic world, and so your aim when writing to that form is often merely to impress, to come up to your tutors' standards. There is always that element of hoop jumping. When it comes to fiction and poetry, however, you know what you like, and you know what sets the clouds alight. You have a real taste, in other words, for the finished result. You're a chef, not a waiter, and your own standards are often the hardest to come up to.
Secondly, any writer who has not confined themselves to a particular genre - and many of those who have - must constantly explore new avenues and reassess their aims. The notion of what it means to work in a creative field is continuously being debated; whether, for instance, it is better to behave as an entertainer, delighting your audience according to their whims and fashions, or as an agent provocateur, stimulating argument (and thereby social progress) through your art. The first might be considered mercenary, the second arrogant. Indeed, another popular view is that the writer need serve no one. Whichever we choose to believe, this uncertainty concerning the function of the writer is a necessary preoccupation of the creative writing student. What, essentially, is the aim of any course on creative writing, and what must a student on that course do to fulfil the criteria? The aim, we might say, is to improve the student's writing, to make them a better writer. Understanding what is meant by 'a better writer', however, is something the student must ultimately dwell upon throughout the course, and probably beyond it.
How, then, does the student take full advantage of the course? 'Write,' we are told, repeatedly. 'Keep writing, in your own time. Find your voice.' And it's easy to take that advice to heart. Not by remaining at home every day, reeling off sentences on paper or computer screen, but by searching for that voice in everyday occupations. By getting through scores of books, trying to work out what it is that makes them go. By experimenting with imitation and assimilation of other writers' voices, as well as our own ideas. By mixing with other writing students, combining efforts and trading secrets, and by consistently taking notice of the world around us. Notebooks, of course, are a valuable aid to memory. That's how you end up, without thinking, writing in one on holiday, on a social occasion, when work should be far from your mind. The line between living leisurely and fulfilling course criteria becomes ever less distinct, until you find that most of the time you're doing both.
That's not to undermine the importance of that academic staple, the seminar. The necessary feedback on your experiments is hard to get outside of one. And being on a course means that there are deadlines for results, and every experiment or cluster of notes must be honed and whittled into something presentable. It's good to keep that sense of urgency about you, if only so as not to end up like Grand in La Peste, endlessly rewriting the first sentence of your novel. There is a definite need to attack the paper or computer screen properly every now and then, and the cold requirements of a course outline (however many thousands of words for review in the next seminar) provide the right incentive and nurture the writer's discipline. It would be wrong, though, to say only this part of the process constitutes work, because success relies so heavily on the discipline of living and writing simultaneously, a discipline that, ideally, the writer continues to practise long after the course has been completed. The work of a trainee writer cannot have borders drawn around it.
Jon Stone, born 1983, has been published in Norfolk-based lit-magazine 'The Eggbox', and Somerset's 'Bluechrome Anthology 2003' - so practically from coast to coast. He is currently president of UEA's creative writing society,
for which he runs feedback seminars and workshops.
Back to Summary
