University and Creative Writing: A Review
In 2018, I left my childhood home for the elegant streets of Bath to pursue my love for creative writing. Bath Spa University was the place for me to become a writer, and through tears, late nights, a plague, and an ADHD and dyslexia diagnosis, I graduated with a First. I saw friends graduate into roles supporting their degree, while others left university early. I’ve heard people say higher education taught them nothing, or leaned in directions they weren’t interested in. Some, under the scrutiny of lecturers and demanding classes, realised their heart wasn’t in it. But, is university worth it? Do you need a creative writing degree to be a better, or maybe even a successful, writer? Reflecting on my four years of studying the art of creative writing has improved my skills, my confidence, my life, yet in ways many aspiring writers might expect.
I’ll sneak you in the back door of my experience at university, at what helped me improve and what surprises came from my time in higher education, that might assist you in either deciding if university is for you, or areas you might be struggling with in your writing life.
Writers all have a story inside them. One that lines their veins and heats their heart. My mind is 25% thoughts, 75% story. I went to university without a first chapter of my heart story touched, and a ghost of me whispered about the idea of completing it during my time there. Unfortunately, with love, you must put your stories to the side—not away, just aside—because creative writing courses are for the growth of your skill, not of your word count.
Classes were coursework based, and required a 2,500 word submission in the class’s format. It is different from person to person, but steer clear of creative writing degrees with exams. At college, I attempted a creative writing class, 50% coursework, 50% exams. I failed spectacularly, because I have dyslexia and can’t write anything good first time when I see the prompt fresh and have an hour to write something great. Creative writing demands the space of being bad. You need to froth and grumble and slam your hands against the keyboard to write, not scratch a feathered quill against an ancient scroll, all calligraphy and beautiful. We aren’t robots.
Here is your first lesson for creative writing courses: you don’t just read widely to further your skill, but you write widely, too.
Classes aren’t just Novel Writing 101. In the first year, you’ll likely be exploring all of writing. Novel, poetry, script, copy, speech, essay, non-fiction prose. It is natural for people to lean towards a certain format: I always liked novel and script the most, but it is the classes outside of my preferred area that linger in my mind when writing. Seeing the different ways to manipulate the written word, the effects they have on the end results, can be vital in understanding why certain types of writing are the way they are, as well as the unique results blending two types can achieve. I went into university hating poetry, yet as I got a First for my poetry coursework, and an email from my lecturer offering “her poet” a place in her second year class, I looked back at my submission and saw how my storytelling changed in poetry format, becoming sharp and visceral in my exploration of the structure. I learnt the importance of specific words, not on their exactness, but of their tone, their feeling. My poem, ‘with a .9 millimeter Luger’, was praised by lecturers and I started to understand the range storytelling can appear.
For me, my first year classes focus was on range. Most classes will introduce a variety of different types of writing. In response, you write a piece imitating or taking inspiration from this example. Then, we workshop. In first year, we read from Raymond Carver to Vladimir Nabokov, consuming dry, hard writing styles to soft, descriptive ones, as an exploration of voice. We had an interesting technique of reading their works and writing our own short stories using the exact narrative pattern of the author. Writers tend to write down the words, focusing on story and character. Voice comes last. Yet here, we were forced to feel the new language on our tongue. We were forced to forget the characters and the plot, to explore a narrative-driven story and how it influences the actions and lives of the story.
Essays are included with the submission, explaining the work we created. Influences, inspirations, the goal of the piece and what we believed worked and didn’t work. It helps to start understanding why we write the way we do, and here at university, where you have professionals reading your attempts and aiding in fine-tuning your pieces to the desired effect, it is the best place to explore.
Depending on the class, it is likely you will be writing a new piece each week for workshopping. With the range of voice and style classes are acclimatising, students will start to create a portfolio of pieces showing the widening of your abilities. In a professional setting, this helps train writers to be fast at producing pieces for clients or gaining the stamina to meet deadlines. One of the loudest advices from authors is to write daily, and even if you can’t nail a flawless streak, university helps push you to write a lot. It is only through writing that you improve. One lecturer said that a writer can only be called “good” once they’ve written 1,000,000 words. This isn’t to diminish what you have already created, but as a goal to reach, because each word from that million is progressing your skills.
Workshopping is a key part of creative writing classes. For many, this part is terrifying. Having people read early work, judging and reacting live, and giving feedback, is not easy. But workshopping is the safest place for people to start reading your work. It took me ages to feel confident with workshops, but after a while, when you get bad feedback and go back to twist your stories into something else, you start to see your fellow writers engage with your writing and react better. It is a hard skill to learn, of not taking feedback personally, and here, where everyone else is vulnerable and most likely sharing their work for the first time, it is a great place to learn the importance of seeing someone unimpressed with your writing while your piece is still in its infancy. Learning if your writing is good can only happen through allowing others to read your work, and in a creative writing course, where you are asked to write a new piece each week, what does it mean if your 2,000 word story about fish with guns doesn’t go down well? You learn more from constructive criticism than with a nod and a vague “it’s good.”
That is what made me realise my creative writing degree was vital to my growth as a writer. I went to university with undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD, struggled to write, struggled to share. I felt self-conscious of my writing, and didn’t engage with the early classes because I didn’t connect with the reading list or the prompts. I let myself write badly and not put my heart into it, because if I write my coursework an hour before the deadline, what does it matter if my grade isn’t great? I hadn’t really tried. But it is my lack of connection with the piece that was keeping me back. It was my fear of failure. I was waiting for inspiration to bloom so I could write the perfect piece and bring it into class and have everyone crying and applauding my excellent work. My first grade for novel writing wasn’t great, and in a meeting my lecturer looked at me with a tilted head, scanning my face, as she said “I can tell your heart isn’t in these pieces”. I was ruining my own stories by not caring about them. She didn’t need to say it, but as I went to the GP, ready to inquire about an ADHD diagnosis, the truth of being a professional writer was to love all of your writing without bias. The very act of writing should be the source of joy, not the piece, or the characters, or the praise of those around you. Typing and seeing words appear, to spin a thread of narrative, should become the core of what makes one happy in order to do well. If you enjoyed writing, then the feedback won’t be so bad, because if they suggest changes, you get to write more!
By the last year of university, I was writing for the love of it. A boring scene was instantly skipped, because who wants to read a scene a writer didn’t enjoy creating?
My novel writing classes focused on the planning, research and beginning of stories, preparing us for continuing them after our graduation. There is brief classes on finding agents and publishers, because a three year course with multiple classes isn’t enough to write a fully edited book, and without much to present to the professionals in the trade, it is hard to properly teach outside of bullet point tips.
Here’s the bad news: writing is objective. There will be lecturers who you don’t see eye to eye with. There will be workshop classes where no one really engages with your story. But, as you start to read your peers’ writing, you’ll learn the valuable lesson of preference. I worked with people who were opposite to me. I love grisly horror and dark fantasy, and the story that was slipped into my hands was one of romance, descriptions, lead by characters, tinged by gold. At the height of my engagement at university, I received half-hearted feedback from my pieces. It helped. I crave criticism now, because anything is better than disinterest. Yet getting these responses over pieces I was getting Firsts for felt good. It felt like a split lip that I was licking the tangy blood from. I was having fun writing, and that’s enough. I had a lot of people enjoy my writing.
But these aren’t exclusive to university. There are hundreds of books on the craft of writing that can help tweak your skills. There’s a chance there is a local workshopping group near you that can help you grow confident with others reading your work, and get some good feedback.
University is expensive and life changing. If writing is your passion and you want to learn the craft and improve, then there is little reason why you shouldn’t succeed. Yet, you don’t need university to be a great writer. University is designed to mould young writers into shape, giving them the structure and deadlines needed for professional work. For me, I don’t think I would have gotten as far as I have without the lessons and “training” the courses provided. Its most valuable piece of knowledge is testing me on how badly I want to be a writer. Putting in the work and approaching writing as a fun, but professional, experience was what made my slow first year courses become my final year’s Firsts. Every book I read shows me the depth writing can reach, and it inspires me to be as creative as possible when writing stories. The other great thing is having honest feedback: people from the industry passing down their knowledge in a safe environment, giving in depth tips where agents or publishers don’t have the time to explain what did not work for them.
If university sounds like it is for you, then it is an incredible experience and one that, putting your whole heart into, can be so rewarding. But you don’t need university. Instead, here is what a summary of the most important lessons uni taught me:
Read widely. I never read the same genre back to back. Ask friends or family members for their favourite books and read them. Any sections you enjoyed, mark, and come back, read it slowly, weighing each word in your hand until you see the stitching of the writing. Any interesting voices an author uses can be learned, if you play with writing, using their project as a template. Keep the tense, the perspective, if the narrator is omniscient or limited. If they use short sentences and little description, neither will you. If they use winding sentences with mountains of description, you must comply. Explore the genres you are alien to, and ask yourself what you would write in this genre. Go to author events. Attend poetry nights. Read books from across the world. Read the newspaper, or a book about birds. Inspiration can come from anywhere.
Write often. Aim for 1,000,000 words. Write one scene several times, with different tenses, different perspectives, format it as a diary entry and write up and down, one sentence long, the next short, and back and forth. If you have an idea, write “My idea is…” and start explaining it, until it runs into a story. Incorporate creative writing in daily life. Make your shopping list a poem. Send a text to a loved one explaining your day through flash fiction. Write out negative feelings through a short story in a scrappy, black book that no one will ever look at. Sit down and leak your thoughts onto the page. A writer writes, even if it’s not their current project. Everything helps. Usually, once you start writing, the crave to continue manifests. If it doesn’t, assess what isn’t gripping you. Write down a list of things blocking your path. Writing is magic. Seeing it in front of you tends to seal it to the page, so it looks small and manageable. Then, with it plucked out of your brain, you might be able to continue.
Keep a writing journal. Your mind might be a steel trap, but seeing it on paper or on a screen is different. Writers use words, and they appear differently when they are solid structures. If you are struggling with a piece, write down what feels wrong and what you want. Do bullet points of scenes you want to write, and underneath, write why it excites you, why it is integral. Explain to yourself what you were thinking while writing, what emotions were high, if anything was persuading a certain state of mind in your personal life. Have a spreadsheet to input your daily writing. Give yourself an achievable goal, and add colours to highlight your success or failures.
Have fun. This is for you. No one else needs to read this. Keep your project a secret, until you’ve written to the end. In novel writing, your first draft is your way of discovering what this story is. I never tell anyone other than the general theme, because a specific explanation plants excitement in others, and expectations start to grow. Let yourself break free of the plan and explore the land of your work, until it clicks into place. What is your favourite book, your favourite character, an amazing scene that lingers with you years after reading it? Channel the love into your writing. Dance in the light of the topics you love.
Remember, it’s okay to fail. If you don’t write every day, that’s okay. If you don’t get published, that’s okay. If people don’t like your writing, that’s okay. Failure is far better than not writing. I failed my creative writing course in college. I couldn’t go on to the next year. Now, I am writing for myself. I see these scenes in my head, fleeting and ghost-thin. Writing helps me enjoy it afresh, like watching a film you’ve only heard reviews of. There is no pressure to publish your work (unless you have an irritated agent waiting, tapping their foot and checking their watch).
