‘No writer emerges from childhood into a pristine environment, free from other people’s biases about writers.’

Writer.
It seems to be something of a dirty word.

Were I to go into a room full of Creative Writing students and ask them how many were writers, I wonder how few tentative hands I would see raised. Instead we hedge ourselves, saying we want to be authors, journalists or screenwriters: practical jobs that we can assign a label and a pay-cheque to. We all love writing, but we're ashamed of being writers.

In my opinion, as soon as children enter primary school their creativity is culled. These small children are already deciding what they want to be in life: firefighters, police officers, teachers, vets or nurses; all practical and sensible occupations. To say they wanted to grow up to be a writer would be like them saying they wanted to grow into a penguin. A ridiculous notion!
Anyone can write; everyone has a book in them: these are the things we're told from the beginning, and as with Rose in Who Do You Think You Are? when we try to be a writer, we're told that we're showing off.

Writing is hardly a specialised skill in modern day Britain; the literacy rate is 99%, nearly everyone can put down words into some semblance of coherency. But crafting words, now surely that takes some talent. Authors need patience to write their novels; screenwriters need to know the rules of writing a script. Just as much knowledge goes into writing as learning to drive. But artists are reduced to being artsy fartsy and writers are ashamed of writing. In a world surrounded by books, we're told that no one cares about who wrote them.


Comments

  1. Hannah Routledge15 January 2014 at 15:19

    I would definitely would count myself as someone afraid to admit to being a writer. You mention that aspiring writers instead say they are aspiring to being authors, wanting a pay check attached to their writing. I think this illustrates that the world we now live in is one ruled by capitalism and the hunger for money.

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  2. Anonymous15 January 2014 at 19:56

    I couldn't agree more with the fact that our education system snuffs out creativity. If you speak of the value of art and creative expression in this day and age you are likely to be laughed at. It is the product of living in a materialistic and predominantly scientific society.

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  3. the insistent camel21 January 2014 at 14:00

    These things come and go in waves.A lot of the teaching I have done has been attached to projects/institutions that have little in the way of resources and rely on funding. When that funding is cut it is invariably the 'creative' classes and projects that get cut in favour of employability and functional skills. Then, two years later, people realise that qualifications and a CV are important but so are the soft skills that are often learnt through creative subjects; the kind of skills that help you keep the job you've got... And so the emphasis shifts back again - for now!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sam Spam22 January 2014 at 13:17

    It is an odd world we live in, isn't it? Emphasising to children the practical jobs is like giving boys play hammers and girls dolls from the onset. Who says they want those things in the first place? It's the rules that society places upon our thinking that shape who we are and these early experiences are essential in creating personality and what makes you you.

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