Today we welcome RNA members Cathie Hartigan and Margaret James. Why did they decide to write The Creative Writing Student’s Handbook?
Margaret James
Margaret is a British writer of historical and contemporary fiction. She is also a journalist working for the UK’s Writing
Magazine and she teaches creative writing for the London School of Journalism.
She was born in Hereford, but now lives in Devon at the seaside, which is great
because it means when she is stuck for a plot she can always go for a walk along
the beach and be inspired!
Her latest novel is a contemporary romantic comedy, The Wedding Diary.
Cathie Hartigan
Cathie teaches the
piano and creative writing. Although her
professional training was in music, a decade ago she swapped one keyboard for
another in order to take her life-long love of writing more seriously. Since
then, she has won several prizes for her short stories, was a finalist in the
annual Woman and Home short story
competition three times and was thrilled to be included in the digital edition
of Truly, Madly Deeply.
Cathie lectured in
creative writing for nine years at Exeter College before leaving to found CreativeWritingMatters,
which offers a range of writing services and administers The
Exeter Novel Prize. Becoming a published novelist remains Cathie’s
primary ambition.
When not writing,
Cathie sings in a small vocal ensemble. The beautiful Devon coastline also
provides plenty of distraction but on a rainy day if there’s an opera or
theatre screening at the cinema, she’ll be there.
‘Collectively, Margaret
and I have clocked up over three decades of teaching experience,’ says Cathie,
who taught creative writing at Exeter College for many years and is now CEO of
CreativeWritingMatters, an Exeter-based initiative which organises writing
competitions, offers mentoring and provides a range of other services to
writers. ‘We both realised long ago that the students who are likely to do well
are good learners: who are willing to listen to their teachers but who don’t
expect these teachers to lay down a set of infallible rules that will
automatically lead to success. The students who succeed are those who think for
themselves.’
‘So this new handbook
is designed to show creative writing students how to learn,’ adds Margaret, who
teaches creative writing for the London School of Journalism and contributes to
every issue of Writing Magazine. ‘We
hope our readers will engage with us – will think about what we say and will
also do the exercises at the ends of the chapters. We’re always happy to hear
from readers, who can contact us through the CreativeWritingMatters website: http://www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk/contact-us.html.’
‘When we first started
to plan the handbook, we did wonder if our writing styles would mesh well
enough to offer a smooth read,’ says Cathie. ‘The last thing we wanted was for
readers to be able to say: this is by
Cathie, but that’s by Margaret. As it turned out, however, the way we
worked meant this wasn’t a problem.
‘After an initial
meeting during which we decided what the overall content of the book should be,
we agreed to write alternate chapters. Once these were written, we sent them
backwards and forwards several times, tweaking, adding examples, adding
exercises, rewriting when we thought we sounded too bossy (Margaret) or too
sloppy (me).
‘We leaned on our
writer friends to read and proof the book, spent a day preparing then
photographing the cover image, grappled with Kindle Publishing Direct, and then
– hey presto – it was done!
‘We believe creative
writing students can benefit hugely from this book. Perhaps it will help teachers
of creative writing too, for during the writing process both Margaret and I
have learned a lot from each other. This brings me very neatly to our:
Ten Top Tips for the
Creative Writing Student
1 – Don’t go on your
writing journey alone. You can go it alone,
but a fresh pair of eyes will always see things you won’t, even if you look at your
work a hundred times. Join a group.
2 – Face the fear. You will have setbacks: getting nowhere in a
competition, receiving ‘not suitable for our list’ emails from agents and
publishers, or getting no response at all. Later in your career, you might have
to deal with falling sales figures and/or not getting a contract renewed. Cry,
beat a pillow or two and then start planning and plotting again.
3 – Do your research. Most
authors don’t stint on their research for the books or stories themselves. But,
once a book or short story is written, what then? If you already have an agent
or publisher, then of course you’ll ping the manuscript to them. If you don’t,
it’s essential to research the best place to send it. Don’t set yourself up for
failure by sending your darling to an inappropriate competition, agent or publisher.
4 – Keep reading
widely, relentlessly and with an enquiring mind. When a story impresses you,
ask yourself: how did the author do that?
5 – When times are bad,
don’t listen to the saboteur in your head telling you that your writing is a
load of rubbish. Go on writing anyway.
6 – Don’t forget to
write the story. It’s not enough to
write just the back-story and the set-up. Don’t laugh – we see this kind of
thing in competition entries all the time. There’s back-story, there’s set-up,
but the writing doesn’t go anywhere.
7 – What happens and
what happens in the end are two
different questions with two different answers.
8 – If you’re entering
competitions or have deadlines, always leave enough time for the redraft. And
the second redraft. And the third…
9 – Research publishing
options carefully: commercial or self-publishing? Big publisher or smaller
independent?
10 – Keep the faith and
believe in yourself.
Our thanks to both Cathie and Margaret for joining us today
This blog is brought to you by Elaine Everest and Natalie Kleinman.
If you would like to write something for the RNA blog please contact us on:elaineeverest@aol.com
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