Think of all the writing you do at university: thousands upon thousands of words a term. How much of it would you call ‘creative’? Perhaps a metaphor that got a little out of hand or a particularly speculative bit of exposition and, if you do spend time writing stories, poems, plays and the like, chances are it’s in the time snatched from ‘real work’.
Creative writing doesn’t feel like something that fits easily into an academic environment. But for some committed writers, it’s a discipline as demanding as any degree. Dr Clare Morgan was instrumental in establishing Oxford’s Master of Studies in Creative Writing, and now with a new anthology on sale in Blackwell’s and success stories across the board, she’s seen it take its place in the University’s academic landscape.
Dr Morgan’s own career has straddled the worlds of creative and academic writing. She graduated the prestigious East Anglia writing programme before getting a doctorate in English Literature at Oxford, going on to work as a tutor at Christ Church and Brasenose. While she felt like she was part of a ‘historic community’ of writers in Oxford when she was here as a student, a creative writing scene has really emerged in the last few years especially since the instalment of the MSt programme.
Importantly, the course reaches well outside the traditional Oxford bubble, drawing applications and students from around the world and from a wide variety of backgrounds. The age-range is also a mark of diversity; when it comes to the need for life experience, Dr Morgan tells us it’s more a matter of ‘maturity as a writer.’ Some MSt students are fresh from their undergraduate degrees, others in their forties or beyond.
When I ask if the aim of the course is to produce people who can live by writing, Dr Morgan’s answer is carefully balanced. On one hand, it does provide training geared to help graduates publish and market their work, and find satisfying writing careers. But, she says, ‘we’re also realists’. It’s terribly rare to make a living on writing alone, and most who complete the course (or any other creative writing course) face the reality that they probably won’t be among the lucky few.
A key to achieving this goal, Dr Morgan suggests, is diversity – both form and voice. The MSt teaches not just the short story, novel, and poetry forms we might expect, but also dramatic writing of all kinds. It’s not about producing ‘just another unmemorable novel’. While some creative writing programmes may lead to a homogenisation of writing, a prose style that is recognisably taught, Dr Morgan believes that the Oxford MSt encourages experimentation and individuality. Variety matters, and that’s reflected not just in the course intake but its output as well (see our review of the anthology, Initiate).
Of course, the question arises as to whether you can really teach creative writing – perhaps it’s more a matter of nurturing. Writers on the programme already have talent: the idea is to groom it. A main feature of the Oxford MSt, Dr Morgan told us, is attention to the theory and practice of critical analysis. The idea is to develop ‘the artist as critic’, which not only helps writers understand their own work better, but enables them to consider where their work may fit in with the wider traditions and movements of literature. There’s a rigour here: real work after all. It’s not literary studies, but there is a level of analysis that goes beyond being an ordinary reader, and might just produce some extraordinary writers.
