Creative Digest #20: On endings, and the gift of feedback
The latest edition of our departmental Substack
Welcome to the twentieth edition of Creative Digest, the Substack from the Creative Writing team at City, University of London, where we teach on undergrad and postgrad degrees in the School of Communication and Creativity. We hope you enjoy it.
Endings
by Joe Thomas
My son is coming to the end of Year One at primary school. It’s been a particulary important experience for him, I think, and in great part thanks to his wonderful teacher. It’d be an emotional ending under normal circumstances; this one is sharpened by sadness: at the year’s end, in just a couple of weeks from now, his wonderful teacher will be leaving the school and the country and returning home, overseas. Observing my son process his feelings, I’m reminded of how hard it can be to navigate change, how bewildering, how difficult it is to identify and name and manage emotions, especially when such formative and instructive relationships are involved.
Our current second-year MFA writers are coming to the end of their time with us, and I’ve been reflecting on what that means for them - and for me, too. My hope is that they continue to synthesise the learning they’ve done here through their continued practice; the writer keeps going, I suppose, regardless, one word after another. The cohort have made lasting friendships; their care and support for one another is a lovely thing to have witnessed at close hand. They’re funny, too. I will miss them.
That said, I asked if any of them wanted to write a little bit about their experience at City St Georges for this Substack edition and I only got one volunteer! (They are, of course, extremely busy with their novels; this is an ironic complaint!) The piece is below, thank you, Damien. I think it reflects something of what we do here. And if any readers are interested in learning more about our programmes, drop me a line (details in the web links below).
There’s plenty of aphorisms and proverbs for this kind of thing. I suppose this serves quite well:
‘When the student is ready the master appears. When the student is truly ready, the master disappears.’
I believe this is attributable to Buddah or Lao Tzu, though I heard it via Charlie Runcle, Hank Moody’s hapless literary agent in Californication, which I suspect says something about me. Hank becomes a lecturer in Creative Writing in Season 3. His theory?
‘I can’t teach you how to write, and anybody who says they can is full of shit.’
Though he follows this with something I do believe:
‘By all means, go for it. Write the shit out of it. Don’t be niggardly with your emotions. Just run it up the flagpole and see who salutes, okay? Now get the fuck out of here. Go read a book or something. Preferably one of mine.’
Church.
Feedback: the gift that keeps on giving?
by Damien Le-Hoste
We’re in workshop. Our Main Character has shared their excerpt in advance, spending a day they didn’t have getting it into a state ready for eyes other than their own. It’s spell-checked and the punctuation is, well, punctuating? It’ll do. The dialogue has the kind of verisimilitude only seen in documentaries — curtain up — happiness.
Of course, this is a workshop, so our MC is prepared for challenges. They have absorbed the intent of the work and come prepared to clarify and even defend.
It’s time. There’s a moment or two as colleagues around the table turn on their devices, and then, one-by-one, with generosity, kindness and precision, express their thoughts. Our MC’s work is passed around like a springbok on a parched savanna: everyone gets a bit, some take bigger chunks than others. It’s blind-spots, it’s emotional logic, grounding details… on and on until — scene — everyone takes a turn reading aloud a sentence they loved and everyone smiles. And at the end, applause, well done.
As aphorisms go, “feedback is a gift” must be up there as one of the most precise. But — and it’s a crucial ‘but’ — are you ready to receive it? It’s true that feedback is not for the lily-livered; both giving and receiving it is an art form in and of itself. We learn early in lessons how to dispatch it thoughtfully and with kindness; I have learned that certainty is often your enemy asking for a colleague’s dispassionate lens.
I learned how to receive critique only once I truly accepted the ways in which feedback functions in my writing practice. This is particularly the case in those moments where I have polished something for a workshop or supervision and been like — I kid you not, this is my literal inner monologue — ohmygod, am I, like, Alexander Chee?; only to be taken down a few pegs. Necessary. I fear all too many writers would be walking around high on their own farts, hermetically sealed sentences, never surviving contact with the atmosphere. The airless sentence bag thing, of course, is fine, so long as you, at some point, plan on subjecting your work to the oxygen of workshopping. If not… I don’t know what to tell you.
This is where the gift of it all lives, as far as I am concerned. Over the last two years, through regular workshops and supervisions presided over by some of our superlative lecturers and our thoughtful, intelligent and constructive cohort I have a sense of my own growth as a close reader who feeds-back. It has taught me to be kind and incisive in my critique, and it has materially improved my own writing. Through this expository call and response, we end up, at turns, learning more about our work. Yes, some sessions are more emotionally taxing than others, but that’s kind of the point, really. And it gets easier once we appreciate how, over time, a group of close readers come to care deeply about the words and the worlds we’re busily transplanting from mind to page, triangulating it, scene by scene, until you know the exact cadence of your final sentence. And there you have it. A completed manuscript, a fixed point, longitude and latitude confirmed. This is the biggest dividend.
Thanks for reading! Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments. If you want to find out more about the programmes offering Creative Writing teaching at City, University of London, then do explore here:
You can find details of open days and evenings, and taster sessions, here
Contributing writers:
Joe Thomas is the author of eight novels, most recently True Blue
Damien Le-Hoste is a second-year MFA writer at City St Georges