Many
people were surprised I wanted to go on "the Manhire course" as it's
been known - the creative writing class at Victoria University - because I’d
already had several novels and other books published. Why would an established
author need writing lessons? they asked. There were indeed some things I
thought I could do well enough already, like structure and plot and character
and dialogue.
Lesson
Number 1: You can always do a lot better.
Lesson
Number 2: You're never too old to learn.
There
were revelations I never expected, such as the discovery of a literary genre
I’d never heard of, and probably won’t bother to explore again: transgressive
fiction. I now know it covers graphic exploration of aberrant sexual practices
and mutilation – visiting the edge of experience, someone called it. I’m amazed
that I managed to read it all without throwing up. Ironically, one of the three
beautiful young women in the class came up with that one and it was a matter of
principle not to seem old school about “visiting the edge of experience”. That
is, after all, why I wanted to go on the course in the first place.
What
did I learn about writing?
Here
are some of the key things I learned:
- How
to recognise clichés and, for the most part, lose them
- How
to stop over-explaining and running on, and accept that less is more
- Severely
prune adverbs (I don’t think I could ever drop them entirely – there are
two in this list already)
- Dialogue
doesn’t have to follow on – people often don’t answer a question or say
the logical next thing
- Writing
what you know is safe. Sometimes you have to go outside the boundaries and
“visit the edge of experience” – though preferably not through
transgressive fiction!
Footnote:
Felicity Price is on a panel,The Stuff of Life, at The Press Christchurch Writers Festival, with fellow authors Joanne Harris and Nicky Pellegrino on Sunday 2 September at 2.00pm. I am chairing that panel and am currently reading Felicity's A Sandwich Short of a Picnic to be followed by the latest titles from the two other authors.
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