Progress on my Istanbul-set short story has been held up somewhat, what with all the hoo-hah about the general election, Brighton Fringe events and a birthday party. I managed to get another 500 words out on Thursday, but have switched to working on a rather shorter idea I’ve had floating around for a while, a change being as good as a rest, and have managed about 1100 on that so far. Shouldn’t take me more than a few days to finish, and it’s a fun one to write.
Have been playing Nier for a few days, which has turned out to be a very enjoyable RPG. After Final Fantasy XIII it’s nice to be back in a more traditional game, with towns, quests and people to talk to. The characters are interesting twists on the archetype, with a foul-mouthed buxom psychopath and a sarcastic talking book as your main companions. The scriptwriters have done very well, poking fun at many of the RPG cliches and including injokes aplenty. Reminiscent of Zelda at times in its gameplay, the graphics aren’t the best the next-gen consoles have to offer, but the soundtrack is brilliant.
I promised a rant in my last post, so here goes…
Back at the beginning of April, I read an article in the Review section of the Weekend Guardian, which talked about after-school creative writing workshops and the author’s recent experiences helping to run these. It infuriated me.
The article is here
While I was pleased that people are bothering to hold these workshops (and it is a charity), as anything that encourages children and teenagers to write and use their imagination is a good thing, I was upset by the casual anti-genre bias demonstrated by Tim Pears both in the article and as described in the classes.
An excerpt: ‘At first, it seeemed, all the pupils wanted to write sci-fi thrillers, historical fantasy, ghostly tales. Some did so expertly. As time passed, however, more and more of them gained the confidence to describe their world, short pieces like shafts of light illuminating hidden, deeply felt experience.’
I’m wondering what was wrong with the ‘expert writers’ of sci-fi thrillers, historical fantasy and ghostly tales in the first place. Why should children not be encouraged to continue writing genre fiction if they have a talent and an enthusiasm for it? It would seem that this is casual championing of ‘literary’ fiction, where real experience and authenticity are valued above imagination.
Another excerpt: ‘Previous experience has shown us that workshops have been particularly effective, and the writing produced has been particularly moving, where they have helped students to “value” their memories and histories. This sentiment accorded with my own ideas about creative writing, and hopes for the group. In practice, however, it was not so easy. Engaging with and writing about their own lives and the world around them was, I suspect, somewhat counter-intuitive for teenagers, for many of whom home life and home town are dull, the very world to be escaped from as soon as possible.’
So escapism is to be denigrated as inferior to realism. They must ‘value’ their memories and experiences, even if these are of no interest to anyone else. Oh great, they are going to churn out the next generation of misery memoirs, unpublished Mr Pooters and kitchen sink melodramas. How is this helping them if they want to become successful writers? I understand that drawing on personal experience can help to draw believable characters, but belittling genre fiction to make this point should be unnecessary. Also, if these teenagers are looking to fiction as a way to escape from their dull or unpleasant daily lives, why drag the dull and unpleasant into their means of escape so they can dwell on it further?
The article concludes by mentioning that the students created and published an anthology of their work at the end of the course. I wonder how many genre pieces were allowed into this, or whether it was full of dull, worthy, ‘acceptable’ pieces as sanctioned by the aims of the class? I don’t wish to upset any of the students involved, but if I was in a class like this now, I would be asking some very tough questions of the organisers. When at school, I was lucky enough to receive encouragement for my (almost all genre) short stories, and my teachers were kind enough to put up with my ridiculous fantasy epics, suggesting similar books I might like, some non-genre with similar themes, asking questions about my unbelievable characters and plot-holes and generally increasing my desire to continue writing, and reading. If I had been encouraged to write about real life, involving as it did my parents’ failing marriage and financial trouble, I might just have given up there and then.
Tim Pears began his article by discussing the ‘cultural divide’ between those who grow up with books in the house, and those without, and how these creative writing classes can diminish this divide by fostering creativity. I think the main aim of the charity is laudable, but I fear that these classes, if run like the ones Mr Pears was involved in were, may hinder just as much as help.
It is well known that many teenagers stop reading, or read less when they reach adulthood, and I think that this may have something to do with accepted adult attitudes to genre fiction (as demonstrated in this article). Many fantastic YA books are genre, and as people get older, they may want to read more of the same. But it’s generally seen as embarrassing and childish to still be reading horror, sci-fi or fantasy as an adult (unless it’s Harry Potter and then it’s seen as a news-worthy fad), and the books pushed on us instead are the Booker shortlist, which may well have literary plaudits, but are often just plain dull. And if books are dull, they get cast aside, and the reader is less likely to pick up another, especially if they aren’t a particularly fast reader. This attitude permeates the media. It peeves me that Horns by Joe Hill, who isn’t an unknown by any means, received a tiny, but glowing, review in the sidebar ‘genre’ column shared with two other books, whereas a pedestrian review of the latest literary darling’s book will routinely get half a page to itself.
Don’t get me wrong, there are many literary novels which I love, and I can appreciate that many people enjoy (if enjoy’s the right word) the short stories of Lorrie Moore, and the like, where a banal conversation between an unhappily married couple can speak volumes about human experience, but I don’t think it’s helpful to teenagers to push this as superior or more valid than the writing they enjoy. The mention that some of these teenagers were writing their genre fiction ‘expertly’ particularly worries me. If the world has been denied the next Iain M Banks, James Herbert or Tanith Lee because of the meddling elitism of a creative writing class then we as readers and fans are much worse off.
Glad I’ve got that out.
In a lighter vein, I was lucky enough to spot a beautiful framed print of a James Jean painting for sale in the Windmill pub for £80, so it had to be mine! In spite of having read many volumes of Fables I didn’t realise he was the same artist until I googled him later. I think you’ll agree it’s lovely, and they have several others available, so I recommend taking a look and snapping them up…
Alessa Dark 