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Facing up to what you really don’t want to try - The Open College of the Arts

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Facing up to what you really don’t want to try thumb

Facing up to what you really don’t want to try


Do you ever find yourself mentally shrieking, no, no anything but that? I often find myself trying to persuade dyed-in-the-wool poets that they’ll gain a lot by writing short stories and learning about narrative and structure. I tell short story writers that their dialogue will benefit enormously from writing a script. And I tell scriptwriters that having a crack at poetry will hone their language skills. I also tell students that the form should fit the idea – some ideas are too long and complicated for anything except a novel, others too short for anything other than flash fiction. Some are too visual for anything other than a stage play, others too sound-based for anything but a radio play. But it wasn’t until I read Manifold Manor, by Philip Gross, that the point of poetry sank in. At the end he says, “Really, the difference between poetry and prose isn’t to do with lines and rhymes. Ordinary prose can tell you what has happened, but poetry can make it happen to you now.”
For decades I was terrified of poetry. It all seemed so incredibly technical and difficult. I didn’t see the point; I wanted to tell a story. So when I did my MA I made myself face up to this and do the poetry module, even though the scriptwriting one beckoned as I’d already had five radio plays broadcast. What’s the point of doing a course if you don’t learn something new? I struggled. It hurt. I came to realise that this was something I had to actively learn; with prose and playwriting I’d been able to just launch in and have a go, and it seemed to come naturally. I hated maths at school – learning about different verse forms and scansion and feet seemed remarkably similar. However, the more I tried things out the more interesting it became, and I realised that the point of all these verse forms was that each one taught you something different. You found out what you didn’t want to use, as well as what you did.
Eventually I did manage to come up with something that was worthwhile, and I won the Cardiff International Poetry Competition with a sestina in 1999. One of the things I learned through writing this very structured form was that a lot of poems need to be started at the end, rather than the beginning. In a sestina, the six words at the ends of the lines are repeated throughout in a strictly determined order. If you want to make it more difficult for yourself you make them rhyme. But because you have to fit all six into the final three lines, it’s best to write the end first. The other thing that stops those six words hitting you like a sledgehammer is to find ways of incorporating them into well-known phrases or sayings, or multi-syllabic words that can be cut in half.
Of course, it may be genres rather than forms that you find yourself avoiding. I’ve had a go at science fiction, fantasy, historical, erotica, and humour… but I still can’t write a detective novel or a thriller, despite attending a number of forensic science courses. Yes, I know all about blood splattering and cyber-crime and poisons. And I haven’t given up yet. One day I’ll manage it. Why don’t you have a go at something you hate? You may find you learn a lot more than you expected.


Posted by author: Liz Newman

4 thoughts on “Facing up to what you really don’t want to try

  • Great post. It’s always worth trying something difficult and outside your comfort zone.And trying the same subject material in genres that are not where you want to be, actually strengthens your understanding of how your customary genre works.

  • I was also terrified of poetry. I didn’t understand it, much less want to write it but as I’m following the creative writing degree pathway, I had no choice. I ended up with an A* – my highest so far. To this day, I still can’t believe I achieved such a high mark but what I’ve taken away from that module is much more important. It taught me how to be economical with words, which is especially useful when writing short stories and to listen to the sound of a words, something I’d never considered before.

  • This post rang so true for me. At school I hated and feared maths so much that I felt sick before the lesson! So I now have to try to to not think of poetry with the same rigidness. I did the module and surprised myself and definitely learnt from it.

  • That’s very interesting, Liz. It’s easy to assume that poetry comes naturally to poets!
    I felt the same about Scriptwriting – scared – and so forced myself to take the module, and was very pleased that I did. I had to work harder at it than prose and that paid off because I got a good result. At first I was well out of my comfort zone but it taught me to think much more about form and structure and to make every word count.
    And now as I work my way through Life Writing, I sometimes imagine it as a script. So it has added another dimension to my work.

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