Teaching means a lot to me. One of those lovely life paradoxes for me is that through teaching, I often feel like I’m the one who learns the most.
I designed and facilitated a lot of creative writing courses through my online business, Spilling the Ink, from 2014-2017. In 2018, I paused the courses to focus on developing my novel, but I continued individual mentoring through 2020. While I’m new to teaching with the National Centre for Writing, this upcoming course marks a return to a beloved calling for me and I’m delighted about that.
Here are a few things that I’ve learned while teaching writing. I’m sure I’ll be learning even more over the coming months.
- I’m fascinated to see what captures the imagination and I find it thrilling to witness other people’s ideas come to life. I love it when the unexpected finds its way onto the page and becomes clearer and sharper with each iteration.
- I’m certain that everyone has interesting stories to tell. One of the exciting parts of writing is finding ways for those stories to come to the surface and shine.
- I believe each person has a unique voice. All your experiences, preoccupations, and questions will inform your writing. Even if it’s fiction! And that’s a good thing. Let it all in – you can always disguise or tweak it later. But no-one else sees the world from your exact perspective, so no one else can tell the story you will tell.
- I think messy drafts, gaps, uncertainties, and places where you shrug your shoulders and say ‘Um…I don’t know?’ are not only inevitable, but signal fires. These apparent stumbling blocks are often the exact places where digging will yield buried treasure, waiting to be unearthed and polished up through writing.
- When you write a story that only you can tell, you’ll write the story you need to tell. And it may well be the story you need to read.
- And last, more important than getting it right is getting it written.
As a teacher, I believe that my job is to welcome you, to meet you on the page, to do my very best to see where you’re coming from and where you’re hoping to go and offer insights or observations that may help along the way. Teaching is an opportunity to walk with you on your creative path for some time and I consider that a sacred calling.
Start Writing Fiction starts w/c 23 January 2023. Registration and more details here.
Next post: Thoughts on feedback.