100 Day Creative Challenge Day 89: The Three C’s
Number One: Craft
The creative life requires the ‘Three C’s’ — Craft, Community and Conversation.
Writing is a solitary pursuit. We sit and tap away on our laptops for hours—alone with our thoughts. We go off on amazing adventures and spend time with created characters—in isolation.
People who aren’t writers think that it must be an easy life being a writer—especially if you work from home and seem to spend your days sitting on the computer.
What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out the window.
Rudolph Erich Rascoe
Isolation, quiet and time are non negotiable when it comes to actually getting the words down on the page. Maya Angelou said she used to book into a hotel and ask them to take everything off the wall so she could write without distraction. However, when it comes to developing as a writer, we need to have some input from others. I find that the three C’s have been invaluable in my journey as an author.
There’s tension in being artistic and needing to study the craft. On the one hand we want to be free. On the other, we need to be skilled to create well. We need both to flourish. In 2010, I had finished my book, Perfect Mercy and took it the Word Writers Fair in Perth. I signed up for a critique session with Anne Hamilton. I sat with her, and one other writer, for six hours whilst she critiqued our writing.
Anne told me I didn’t understand point of view and that I was telling, not showing.
She told me it was good, but not ready.
I came away thinking, ‘I haven’t finished this novel, I have to start again.’
It took me another year before I finished the rewrite of the manuscript. I attended an ACW Conference in Phoenix and showed my book to an agent who told me to send it in. I did so and was told it was still not ready to publish.
I went away and another year passed before I finally published it. Looking at it now, I really think it was still too early to publish it, but I guess maybe your first novel is your learning curve.
My point in telling this story is that between those points of being told my novel wasn’t ready I worked on crafting the work. I didn’t change the plot much, I needed to fix the writing.
That’s where it’s hard to look past the personal, and listen to the experts. Our novel is our baby. It’s our creation—how dare anyone criticize it or tell me it needs fixing?
Basically I had to get over myself and acknowledge that whilst I could teach, I wasn’t able to execute. Writing is an artistic enterprise, but it is also one that depends on solid craft to be successful. I attend writers’ conferences, submit to critiquing from colleagues and enrol in writing courses as much as possible.
In 2013, I completed a summer school at Oxford University. This was a highlight of my personal and professional life. It pushed me to stretch my skills even further and to allow my work to be put under a spotlight, despite how wretched I felt when my work was critiqued. I was told my work was publishable by the tutors and obtained good marks.
I’ve taken classes in Tuscany with the wonderful Lisa Clifford and a master class with the amazing Margie Lawson. I work on my craft as if my life depended on it. If you want to be serious about your creative work you must work on your craft.
