A Clutch Of Pearlies: Can You Learn How To Write?
...I was really impressed that most of my classmates had brought a manuscript along with them to the course. I felt right out of it. All I had with me was a notebook, a pen and a yearning to have a novel of my own. I did churn out several chapters when studying Novel Writing, but they weren't worthy of being recycled into door stops let alone being published. By the end of the first year I learned that I was never going to be a novel writer...
But Mary Pearl offers the encouraging thought that people who do join writing courses can enhance their skills and find a niche for their written work.
To sample more of Mary's entertaining words please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_clutch_of_pearlies/
Can you learn how to write? Lots of people have made a mint writing books saying that you can. I’ve read some of them myself and found them interesting and informative. I also learned a lot from a writing course I took a few years ago. When I came back to study as an adult I thought I would come out of it with a qualification to do the thing I had studied for: writing. It's not that I had aimed for it, but I was looking for something constructive to do now that my children were old enough to raise themselves. I'd read the syllabus and found it interesting and thought what the heck! I'll enjoy myself studying something interesting and be a writer into the bargain.
I was really impressed that most of my classmates had brought a manuscript along with them to the course. I felt right out of it. All I had with me was a notebook, a pen and a yearning to have a novel of my own. I did churn out several chapters when studying Novel Writing, but they weren't worthy of being recycled into door stops let alone being published. By the end of the first year I learned that I was never going to be a novel writer.
I don’t know how many of my friends published after they left, but I did learn that it wasn’t so easy even if you had something worthwhile to offer. Most publishers don’t take unsolicited manuscripts. Offerings go to what is called in the industry a ‘slush pile’. If you ever hear back from the publishers it’s months later, after you’ve inquired a couple of times (not often enough to bug them) and usually it’s a standard form letter to tell you they don’t want it. If you’re thinking you might want to spread your wings and send your manuscript to a few publishers at a time – don’t. Publishers do not like it.
If you want to be off the slush pile and have your manuscript seriously considered (although not necessarily accepted) you need an agent. But their books are often full and most won’t take you anyhow unless you’ve published.
And even if you get your manuscript accepted, the advance isn’t much to speak of if you’re living in Australia, given our small population, neither will the royalties be, but you need to pay back for the advance before the royalties are yours.
A blockbuster is what you need. Most of our top notch writers like Bryce Courtenay or Colleen McCulloch, have the market sewn up, so the rest of the aspiring writers get what’s left over. But even you could luck it like lucky Nicholas Evans did. He was a first time author who wrote the Horse Whisperer. It sold 15 million copies worldwide, and to quote the Amazon blurb: ‘the film option was snapped up by aging heartthrob Robert Redford for 3 million smackers.’ His ‘How To’ book if he wrote one would be worth reading, but in the end you need to keep in mind that it is how he did it, not how you or I would go about doing it. That’s the thing about writing, I keep hearing it’s a solitary pursuit. That’s the only thing writers have in common. In everything else, we go about things differently.
Once I’d accepted that novel writing wasn’t for me, I settled down and enjoyed my course. There was a journalism type subject, short story, novel writing, writing for radio to name just a few. And as I saw it, each subject linked into the other. Even if you’re writing an article, you need to know how to grab a reader’s interest. When you write fiction, you still need to keep to the integrity of background information. There’s nothing more annoying to the reader than to sense that the historical context: dress, attitudes of the time and even the style of dialogue are wrong.
I don’t want to depress any aspiring writers reading this piece, but I believe that taking a writing course will enhance what skills you already have, but I’m not sure that you can learn to be a writer in the same way you can take a course and come out a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher. But don’t be too dejected. Although not everyone has a novel in them, the people who are attracted to writing courses generally discover what skills they do have and find their niche, whether it’s in advertising, or article writing or even setting up blogs where they and any followers can enjoy seeing what they have to offer in electronic print. Last but not least, I like to learn. I believe that whether or not you become a 'real writer' or can put your skills to practical use, nothing you learn is ever wasted.
