Great writers - nature or nurture?

Are writers taught or are they made? Is the ability to produce a great novel somehow derived from the genes, or is it a craft that can be learned through effort and good teaching?

Like all such questions, this is a false dichotomy. For a truly great writer, innate ability is surely needed. But learning the craft also. I have been privileged to witness so many students developing their capacity to write beautiful, powerful prose that I am convinced of the importance of good teaching in this process and that the innate ability is not as rare as some people claim.

There is a problem however. I have seen people postpone writing their first novel because they feel they are not quite ready. Instead, they do another writing course. And another. And another. Courses become a thing to do INSTEAD of writing.

You can't learn to write novels without writing novels.

Last night I gave the first in a series of classes designed to combat that problem. The deal is this: each student works on their novel through the week. This is the process from which they will derive most of their learning. And on Tuesday evening we all come together to talk about their progress, share samples of their work, answer problems that have arisen, give suggestions and encouragement. Each class will be 50% taught and 50% manuscript workshop.

With 14 students, the class is full. We couldn't fit anyone else in the room. I discovered that, curiously, there are 13 female participants and only one male. (Writing courses do typically attract more women than men, but this is more asymmetric than usual).

Everyone seemed focused on the prospect of writing and I sensed a creative excitement in the air. Novel writing gives that - a sense of excitement. It is a journey into the unknown. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this course.

Hadfield Library again

One month on and I'm heading up to Hadfield again.

A class on crime writing awaits. I have two and a half hours to get a group of people to go through the stages of sketching out a crime novel/screenplay story arc. In the process they will hopefully get a deeper understanding of how stories work.

Posessing that understanding has the unexpected side-effect of enabling people to reverse engineer the elements of a movie plot, and thus have a fairly shrewd idea of where the story is going to end up, having only seen the first 20 minutes.

Such knowledge can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing when you make a prediction and it proves correct and you get that smug feeling. A curse if it happens to be your partner who does the prediction and thus ruins your movie experience.

I'm well used to my long-suffering wife saying: "Stop! Don't tell me who did it!" I really must learn to hold my tongue.

When, just occasionally, a movie serves up something completely unexpected, it gives a special buzz of pleasure.

I say 'movie' rather than 'novel' because movies tend to be more tightly plot constrained. In story terms they are more condensed than novels. Being condensed, it is harder for the people who crafted the story to hide the tell-tale construction lines that, when projected, show where the story is heading.

My strange but (mostly) enjoyable Odyssey

For those of you who follow my sometimes strange and hopefully enjoyable Odyssey, today's events may seem like a microcosm of my life as a whole.

Here is the event I was going to.

But here is the event that was actually taking place.

If you read very closely, you will see that the first link gives today's date - June 8th, whereas the second link gives the date July 8th. (The pages may be changed by the time you read them, of course).

Somehow - entirely my own fault, I am sure, I copied the date from the literature network web page into my diary. So, people of Hadfield, when I turn up in exactly one month from now, you will know how much I value you, because I will have done the drive twice.

Yes, this sort of thing happens to dyslexics. If you read the usual dyslexia check-list - which coincidentally I found myself browsing as I sat in my car outside the closed library - you will see that one of the important signs of dyslexia is: "Mixing up dates and times and turning up for events on the wrong day."

The worst thing about turning up for an event on a month early it is that it causes embarrassment to other people. "You didn't drive all that way did you? I am so sorry for you!" But I decided years ago to embrace this aspect of who I am with open arms. If I find myself in this situation, make the most of it.

Which today I did. The drive was beautiful and surprisingly calming. I arrived relaxed, sat in the car and came up with some excellent ideas which I think are going to be extremely useful. Among them are a series of excellent title possibilities for a movie idea that I have been working on with a couple of people (a project I have not said much about on here). Then I enjoyed the mountainous views on the way back.

In today's situation my philosophy works. The problem comes when I get something wrong the other way around - as I did last Saturday. I got mixed up with the times and dates and did not realise I should be giving a class. This is what I really regret. To be honest, I have done it so many times over the years that I am emotionally sensitized. When I realised - after it was too late - I was very distressed. I still am. I hate letting people down.

What should I so about this - I really don't know. Encourage people to send me a reminder a couple of days before? Try to make it up to people by offering them something by way of compensation? Probably all of the above.

And try to lighten up about it. It shouldn't reduce me to tears.

Hadfield is a long way away

"Can you do a class on crime writing in Hadfield Library?"

"Sure. Love to."

"It's a long way, you know. People don't always realise how far north it is."

"No worries. It can't be that far. It's in Derbyshire, after all."

I looked at the map yesterday to plan my journey. She was right. It IS a long way. How come the East Midlands stretches all the way to Manchester?

(For those of you reading this in the USA or Australia, please be advised that on this small island we think of a hundred mile journey as a fair hike.)

So - it is blog-lite today as I am about to hop into the car and zip up to Hadfield to give a session on crime writing. During the session I hope to get the group to collectively plan out a story - whether it is for a novel or a movie I leave up to them. It's a popular workshop which I have done several times in different places. Always fun to do. Not so much a writing workshop as a story workshop.

So the actual time I would need to leave would be in two hours. But to prevent me from worrying about time (one of those dyslexic issues) I'm going to set off just as soon as I post this and power down the computer.