What My Creative Writing Degree Taught Me About Writing (And About Myself)
At the grand old age of 27, I graduated from university with a 1st Class Honours Degree in English and Creative Writing.
Starting a degree at 24 wasn’t a decision I took lightly, and to be honest I just wanted to be educated to degree level. I wasn’t going to university with the aim of getting a related job afterwards, so when I was deciding what to study, I just went with something I enjoyed. Writing.
And I’m so glad I did.
I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always wanted to be a novelist. One of my main goals in life was always to write and publish a book, so studying creative writing seemed like a no-brainer. I thought my degree would help me achieve that goal, but studying creative writing at this level was honestly not what I was expecting.
And I 100% mean that in a good way. It was so much more than I expected.
Even though I still haven’t managed to finish that novel, I can’t believe how much closer I am to doing so, and I definitely owe a lot of my progress to my creative writing degree.
Sooo, if you’re interested in what doing a creative writing degree can do for you as a writer, here’s what I learned over the course of my three years.
English Literature And Creating Writing Go Hand In Hand
Like bacon and eggs, or tea and biscuits. I can’t begin to fully explain what one can teach you about the other.
I love reading, but I had absolutely no desire to study English Literature. Unfortunately, I also didn’t want to move away to university, so a joint major was the only option I had.
Boy, am I glad. I don’t think I would have learned nearly as much if half of my course hadn’t been literature based.
We’re all told time and time again that to be a good writer you need to read a lot. And it’s true. But my degree taught me how to read as a writer, and that’s critically important if you want to get the most out of your reading time.
The literature-based modules of my degree introduced me to so many genres and authors and styles of writing that I was unaware of. I thought I was pretty well read until I started university, and the experience opened my eyes to just how much amazing literature is out there, waiting to be read!
It also showed me how being exposed to this literature could have a huge impact on my own writing.
As an example, I really fell in love with Gothic literature through one of my modules. Gothic was a genre I always assumed was just early horror; Dracula and Frankenstein and that sort of thing. But the genre is a whole living, breathing, HUGE genre all of its own. It’s so big it’s even separated into male and female gothic.
I read some amazing books over the three years, my favourite of which were Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Life and Death of Harriett Frean by May Sinclair, and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
These books had such a monumental impact on the way I now approach my writing. I found that since reading books like these I’m much more aware of subverting the reader’s expectations and making use of the space between the lines. You can say a hell of a lot by not saying anything at all.
In fact, I fell in love with Rebecca so much that the novel I’m currently writing is something of a retelling.
So even though I was already aware of how important it is to read a lot, I learnt the importance of reading a wide variety of books. If you’re writing fantasy, don’t just read fantasy.
Something you think will be completely unrelated to your writing could give you the biggest flash of inspiration in your life. It could help you fill in that gaping plot hole you’ve been struggling with for months. It could finally help you understand why your character does what she does.
And like I glazed over previously, you need to read like a writer. When you’re reading these books, try and notice the techniques that the writer is using. If you really fall in love with a book, think about why. Then you can recreate those things in your own writing, and improve because of it!
You Learn The Most By Trying New Things, Not By Perfecting What You Can Already Do
I started my creative writing degree believing I was just a young adult, fantasy writer. That’s what I was good at and that’s what I enjoyed, so I wanted to spend the three years getting better at doing that.
But it didn’t turn out that way. In fact, I finished my creative writing degree with the discovery that I’m a fairly good autobiographical writer and I spent most of the three years writing that instead.
I never thought there was much joy to be found in writing books that took place in present day, realistic settings, but I’d never tried to write anything like that until I was challenged to do so as part of a writing class.
When we were asked to write an autobiographical piece, I chose to write a first-person short story about having headlice when I was five years old.
And I had so much fun writing it!
The point is I would never have experienced writing that type of creative non-fiction if I hadn’t been forced to do so for one of my classes.
Since writing that piece, I’ve written at least ten other short stories based on things that happened in my childhood, and I’m aiming to get even more done so I can publish them as an autobiographical collection of short stories and flash fiction.
Throughout all of my writing classes, there was a strong emphasis on trying new things and seeing what would happen. I think that my lecturers were keen to take us away from the mentality that everything had to be perfect, but it took me a while to see that for myself.
At first, I was terrified to try something new because I was terrified of writing something crappy. Eventually, I plucked up the courage to attempt an autobiographical piece that was written in 2nd person. And you know what?
It was absolutely terrible!
But it didn’t matter. I screwed up that bit of paper and threw it in the bin, and lost absolutely nothing because of it.
But I learnt a great deal.
Not long after that, I wrote a piece of flash fiction that had very minimal punctuation. It was mostly dialogue, and the only punctuation mark I used was full stops. It was new and experimental and I was convinced it wouldn’t work, but I wrote it anyway.
And to my great surprise, I was rather fond of it. It was the source of many conflicting opinions when I read it to my workshop, but I decided that’s the point of a good piece of writing.
Some people will like it, others won’t. Some people might think you’re a genius, some might think you’re crazy. But unless you get creative and experimental and try new things, you’ll never know what you’re capable of.
Your First Draft Sucks — And It Should
I’m a perfectionist at heart, and I’ve well and truly accepted that. All of my procrastination is caused by my inner fear of producing something less than perfect.
It’s why I’ve never finished a novel. I love writing short stories because there are fewer words to get wrong. I can slave for weeks and even months over a 500-word piece of flash fiction because I’ll write it one sentence at a time and I won’t move on until that sentence is perfect.
It’s a blessing and a curse.
Honestly though, I hate it. As a writer, it’s my biggest flaw, and it stems from a deep-rooted fear of failure. I’m perfectly aware of this, and I know it doesn’t matter if my writing sucks, but I still struggle every single day to silence my inner editor.
But I’m nowhere near as bad as I was before I started my creative writing degree.
Because of the sheer amount of writing I had to do, I just didn’t have time to spend hours and hours perfecting everything in the first draft. And I quickly discovered that I didn’t have to. By quickly putting together a first draft I was much more efficient with my writing, and being able to workshop it meant improvements were easier to achieve. I didn’t have to spend hours doing it all on my own.
There’s no point in aiming for perfect first drafts because a first draft will never be perfect anyway.
No matter how amazing you think your writing is, there will always be ways to improve it. Crappy first drafts are not only inevitable, but they’re more useful to you as a writer.
There were countless times when a first draft I’d spent hours on needed much more work than a first draft I’d thrown together in an hour. So in essence, by spending more time writing I was just making more work for myself when I had to go back and edit it all.
Don’t get me wrong, I still find it difficult to not aim for perfection, but it’s better to have a lot of crappy words than a handful of (seemingly) decent ones. At the end of the day, you can’t edit an empty page.
And remember, your first draft is as crappy as that piece of writing will ever be. It will only get better!
Critique Sometimes Hurts, But Harsh Feedback Is The Best Feedback
When I started my creative writing degree I was mortified to discover I would have to read my unfinished WIPs to my classmates to get feedback and critique.
I’d never let anyone read my writing before. Literally no one! So to suddenly be expected to read it to a room full of strangers was honestly something I never thought I would be okay with.
It took the majority of my first semester to pluck up the courage, and I read something that I had already worked on for hours. It was near perfection by the time I presented it for critique.
After I read it, I realised how far from perfect it actually was.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from my creative writing degree is how absolutely invaluable constructive criticism is. Being able to workshop your writing is the secret weapon in your writer’s arsenal, and I only regret not utilising them more.
But for workshops to really help you, you have to have thick skin, not take feedback personally, and accept that there are always improvements to be made.
You won’t benefit from people telling you how great you are. One of my pet peeves was feedback from people who claimed they “wouldn’t change a thing.”
Bullshit.
Nothing I’ve ever workshopped has been perfect. Towards the end of my degree, I took to prefacing every workshop with a disclosure asking everyone to literally tear my work apart. My feelings don’t get hurt because I know the value of brutal but honest feedback.
I appreciated those people who told me my characters were shallow or my story didn’t make sense. I loved the people who picked holes in my plots or rolled their eyes at cliches and told me I should rewrite.
Without those people, I would never have fixed those issues, and without fixing them I would have gone on believing that my average piece of writing was completely flawless.
The main thing I miss now I’ve graduated is the workshops. Luckily, I have an amazing friend who reads all my writing and rips it to shreds for me. He knows my feeling won’t get hurt, and even if they did, he wouldn’t spare them anyway.
He knows as well as I do that my writing will dramatically improve because of it.
Not Everyone Will Like What You Write, And That’s Okay
In fact, it’s better than okay; it’s perfect.
I came to realise rather quickly in my creative writing degree that not everyone would love my writing.
Pieces of work that I thought were near perfection, that my lecturers claimed were ready for publication, were still disliked by some of my classmates.
At first, this threw me off guard as my inner desire to please everyone took over. But when I took the time to ask them why they didn’t like it, I realised it wasn’t a problem at all.
Sometimes, reader’s aren’t a fan of a certain tense, theme, genre, type of hair colour. People have preferences; that’s just life. If someone hates reading novels that are written in the first person, they probably won’t like your first-person novel.
That doesn’t mean your novel is bad.
It just means those readers aren’t your target audience.
What I learnt from my creative writing degree is that I should never, ever attempt to write something that everyone will enjoy. It’s just not possible.
Even when I sit and think of my own preferences, I realise there are certain types of book or short story that I would dislike simply because of the subject matter. A lot of people love crime books, but I think they’re boring as hell. Does that mean James Patterson is a terrible author? Absolutely not! But I know for a fact that if I ever read one of his books, I wouldn’t enjoy it at all.
Write for you, and write for the audience that you know will love your book. Don’t write high fantasy fiction and then be sad when romance lovers don’t like it. Don’t even be sad when high fantasy lovers don’t like it!
There’s an audience for everything.
My Creative Writing Degree Made Me A Much Better Writer
I learned so much over the three years of my degree. I learned how to expand my approach to writing, to try new things, and to see what I’m really capable as a writer.
Most interestingly of all, I realised that I had pigeon-holed myself into one specific genre without really meaning too. I love writing YA fiction, but my degree showed me the fun to be had in writing other genres, too. I love writing autobiographical/memoir short stories, and I would never have even attempted it without my degree!
To anyone considering doing a degree or any type of creative writing course, I would highly recommend it. You will learn so much about yourself as a writer, and if nothing else, the workshops are priceless.
