Sydney Writers Centre – Creative Writing Stage 1

There are some skills that I have always viewed as intuitive. You’re either born with it, or not. You can try to learn  – and eventually you might become reasonable – but you will always feel out of your depth and look up to those who seem effortlessly talented. My efforts to be a lead guitarist (which I gave up on happily after about 8 years of trying) and my current attempts to be an engineer feel like skills I was definitely lacking from birth. Another skill I’ve always put in this category is writing – I always imagined that my favourite writers just sat down and poured out the words until they were finished.

Thankfully, the Creative writing course by the Sydney Writers Centre shattered that illusion.

I started the class in November, three weeks after coming home from overseas. My year away had given me lots of food for thought and I felt determined that the next ‘thing’ that I would try was to be an author. I diligently read To Kill a Mockingbird as my preparation and showed up at the training room (overlooking the Harbour Bridge in Milsons Point) ready for my creative genius to be unleashed. Instead, Pamela Freeman took us through the process of writing a book – voice, structure, scene, characters – with nothing, including the hard parts, spared.

Pamela was immediately engaging and refreshingly humble despite the success she has had as a writer – one week we were given several drafts of a passage from one of her books and asked to pick which one was included. She had no qualms in telling us that it was in fact none of them and she had to rewrite the whole thing! I was also amazed by how well read she was and was constantly scribbling down titles that she recommended we read (my next trip to Borders was very exciting!)

The writing task was amusing - although intimidating reading in front of a group of strangers – as we weaved our way from a personals ad to developing character. I always left myself too little time to do the task – possibly because I was still stuck in the mindset that it should write itself if I was any good. The story of a deluded prisoner, written by another student who had patiently researched his setting and crafted a jerky, intense voice, was like a lightning bolt in the room and my mind started to change. Pamela’s critique of each of our pieces shed light on issues that I would have never realised – simple things like making a man sound more like a woman, or drifting from first person to third.

But perhaps the greatest encouragement I received was from reading an excerpt of Making Stories given to me by Pamela at the end of the first week. As someone who can get weary at the sight of challenge, I was troubled to think that writing was not actually as easy as it looked. However, after reading the painstaking process that Peter Carey went through to write Oscar and Lucinda I realised that even the most brilliant writers sometimes feel like they don’t know what they’re doing. So there is a chance for me yet! (and perhaps as an engineer and guitarist as well).

Sydney Writers Centre, http://www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au
Ph: 9929 9237
$395 for five weeks for Creative Writing Stage 1
Also hold courses in magazine writing, novel writing, childrens writing, memoirs, travel writing and business writing

In keeping with the bookish theme, the next entry will be about Alain de Botton and all of his books that I have been eating up recently – you just have to wait until I finish the last one!