Hartigan Cathie - The Creative Writing Students Handbook

Nobody writes in quite the same way as you do. So, themoment your pen touches the paper or your fingertip presses a key, somethingwonderful might happen. You could find you start to write creatively using yourown unique voice.

If you then realise youve written something like the cat sat on the mat, however, itslikely this has come from your memory.A creative writing teacher will focus on helping you to tap into your creativity. You can access this creativesource in a variety of ways, and one of the best is to write every day.

But to write what? Well...try shutting your eyes,turning your head in another direction, opening your eyes and writing aboutwhat you can see. Or close your eyes, listen, open your eyes again and writeabout what you heard. Or write about what you had for lunch, the last shop youvisited or a walk you took. Write about what is bothering or upsetting you orwrite about what makes you happy.

Write freely and, at this early stage, dont allow yourinternal editor to comment on your work. Keep going and always write a fewlines beyond the point at which you first thought of stopping. Change thesubject, change it back, write without worrying about making mistakes. Makenotes instead of sentences if you cant get your thoughts down fast enough.Dont worry if your spelling isnt all that grate (sic). In fact, dont worry if what you write makes no sense at all.

How on earth can this be a good plan? Nobody will publish anincomprehensible story full of mistakes. It is unlikely to win a competition.But...

...every field of human endeavour, whether its sculpting,gardening or writing a cracking good story, requires a coming-together of both ideas and craft. We learn some elements of the craft of writing at school. If were to pass our exams, itsessential we get to grips with good writing practice that we get ourheads round conventional grammar, spelling and punctuation. Commercialpublishers certainly expect us to get our basic presentation right.

But sometimes we are so afraid to break the rules that ourimaginations are stifled. Free-writing as it is sometimes called, allows us tobreak all those rules. Who knows what we might find outside their confines?Some interesting ideas, perhaps?

After youve allowed your imagination free rein for a while,and have accumulated lots of ideas, youll need to think about how you can put allthis material into a story. We all organise our writing into sentences andparagraphs, but it is the order ofour ideas that makes for a goodstory. So this is where the craft ofwriting comes back into play.