From Joel Rickett’s Guardian Bookseller column:
Writing retreats are now wildly popular. On any given week there’ll be small groups of budding scribes strewn around the Lake District, Wales, and even Tuscany, searching for that elusive blend of solitude and writerly companionship. Now they can go further afield with the launch of “writing adventure holidays” from the Literary Consultancy, which promises “the company of some of our best-known writers and artists . . . in a stunning setting which will open mind and senses”.
I’ve always been suspicious of writers’ retreats and my gut instincts tell me that they are a waste of time and money. This isn’t a popular view – after all, who could object to the idea of writers from all over the country getting together to work in a tranquil environment?
These writing adventure holidays are a new thing. But as I’m discussing writing retreats in general, let’s take a look at the company that provides what is regarded as the writing holiday in this country – the Arvon Foundation.
Its courses offer four and a half days at a range of picturesque locations where you’ll be tutored by a range of published authors including A L Kennedy, Toby Litt and Kate Long – and I even see our past Succour contributor Matt Thorne on there. The price includes accommodation and food, and this year there is even the possibility of having your work read by a top literary agent and literary publisher.
Our residential writing courses pluck you from your everyday life and place you gently in one of our four writers’ houses, insulated from the busy outside world of email, internet and mobile phones. Whichever house you choose – in Devon, Inverness-shire, Shropshire or West Yorkshire – we will give you the freedom of time and space to write, supported by expert practical tuition and the encouragement of a community of writers.
It all sounds great, but before you reach for the plastic and click my link you should consider a few things.
Arvon centres can’t guarantee a single room or IT facilities. Now, the two essential conditions for writing are: a) a room that you can close the door on and b) something to write with. This means that Arvon are charging people to work in an environment that is not conductive to writing. (And those charges are high – the standard course fee is a cool £550, although in its defence Arvon does have a grant system for people on a low income).
And think about that phrase: ‘a community of writers’. Writers, as Terry Pratchett said, are as antisocial as cats: to talk of a community of writers is like talking of a individual bee or a renegade sheep. Yet the Arvon ethos seems to be that writing is a committee-based rather than an individual act. This attitude isn’t exclusive to the arts: business disciplines also stress the importance of teamwork and the superiority of the group to the individual. (Anyone who’s been on any kind of management training course will already have some idea of what a week devoted to this philosophy would be like.) A love of solitude and a desire for personal space, major traits in the creative personality, appear to be viewed with suspicion.
The workshop is another concept that straddles the corporate world and the arts. The prevailing wisdom is that all problems can be solved by sitting in a circle of plastic chairs (many aspiring writers confuse the literary seminar with group therapy) and the writers’ workshop is treated as a nurturing environment where talent can flourish and grow. In reality, human nature sees to it that any such group is quickly dominated by one or two chronic attention-seekers, and then descends into factionalism and schaedenfreude. (A friend of mine who teaches creative writing once told me he’s horrified at the unashamed hatred that develops every time a workshop participant gets a book deal.)
Stephen King’s On Writing contains a nice chapter on writers’ retreats. He warns against the fallacy of the magic feather – believing that one can write brilliantly if an exact set of conditions obtain. These conditions – a Yorkshire retreat, an oak-panelled desk, the right kind of swivel chair – may help you gain the confidence to write, but these conditions will not always be there. It’s always good to get away from ‘the busy world of email, internet and mobile phones’ but in life, you will not always be able to escape the sinful clutter of modern civilisation. What I object to is a dependence on the abstract external; the idea that you need silence and space so that God, Pan or the Buddha can tell you what to write. It reduces the role of the artist to, in King’s words: ’stenographers taking divine dictation.’
Arvon’s website lists successful writers who have been on the courses but it’s reasonable to assume that these people made it because they are good at writing, not because of Arvon. To paraphrase King: you don’t need the magic feather to fly, the power was inside you all along.
So is there a point to Arvon other than giving a secondary income to established writers? Without having been on one, I’m going to say that there isn’t. The Tuscany retreats may be different – the weather would be better, anyway. And having your work read by Capel and Land is a good prospect – but should you really have to endure an Arvon course to obtain it?
Of course, one obvious benefit is social - creative writing workshops and courses allow shy and sensitive people to get laid. Even if it does nothing for your writing skills, isn’t Arvon worth the money just to have a good time with like-minded men and women? But there’s a culture of purism that is growing in society, and especially in the literary world. You can all but guarantee that the Arvon studios are entirely non-smoking accommodation and approximately several light years from the nearest pub.
The natural world is beautiful, but cities are beautiful too. The city has certainly given me more ideas for storytelling. By not going to Lumb Bank or Totleigh Barton, I can sit in my room, write all day and then go out to the pub – and still have £550. (I’d probably spend it all that same night, but what the hell).
June 3, 2008 at 11:06 pm |
[...] A lot of writers talk about they’re favorite places to write: in their den, at Starbucks, outside on the patio. They preach about how important it is to find a quiet, solitary area and completely remove themselves from the outside world. Hell, some even go on writing retreats. [...]
June 21, 2008 at 5:25 pm |
Max,
You haven’t been on one… and yet you make a lot of assumptions about them. Nearly all of them wrong I have to say.
Yes, good writers make it without Arvon. But Arvon saves them time. Years sometimes. Ian McEwan would no doubt have got his stories out without going to uea, but they wouldn’t have been the same stories and there might well have been far more wilderness years than there were.
The thing about Arvon is that it works. Getting all the irrelevancies out of the way for a little while (I mean, work, spouses, children… all that nonsense) and just focusing on your work pushes people along further and faster than they thought possible. Add to this the input of skilled craftspeople like Alison Kennedy, the energy and ideas of the other writers and you get huge and unexpected developments in the individual writers’ imagination. Much of the focus of an Arvon week is in persuading emerging writers to pay close attention, both to the work they read, the work they write and to the world around them. And some times you have to be away from that world to get a true perspective on it.
As for writers being as anti-social as cats… This isn’t right surely. Bars and pubs and gigs and readings and literary festivals and kitchens and dining rooms and bed-sits are full of writers talking and arguing and rehearsing their material before setting it down. The act of writing is usually solitary but the preparation is often profoundly social.
Obviously I’m hugely biased because I work for Arvon. But I think the truth is that I work for Arvon because I am a believer in it rather than the other way about. I know my own novel (published October 1) benefitted more from a week at Moniack Mhor (the Scottish Arvon) than it did from two years on my MA course… And it was partly the insight of Suzanne Berne and Marjorie Sandor (the tutors), partly by own self-discipline and determination to use the time away from home andpartly the sheer joy of nights getting rat-arsed with lovely lovely people none of whom I would have met in the normal course of things.
And that is a benefit of Arvon that you don’t deal with in your piece. On a typical Arvon you meet and form reasonably intimate relationships with a fabulous array of people, all of whom are becoming their best most creative selves. On any one course you might have a judge, a parliamentary spin doctor, a Lord, a junkie, a credit controller, a shop assistant, a career criminal, a teacher, a social worker and a retired sheet metal worker. e’ve had call girls and rent boys; expop stars and vicars; lesbian strippers and CEOs of major corporations. Not only are these contacts the purest gold for a writer but you see them in the context of mixing with all the others. And the food and the views are good too.
One other thing I can’t let go> At Lumb Bank at least we have PCs for everyone and single rooms for 14 out of 16 students. And everyone who needs financial assistance generally gets it. Our course may cost £560 but you can get up to £300 off if you’re skint. The point about Arvon really is that it is not a holiday, but a genuinely democratic communal experience. It’s more like a 5 day people’s university or a seminary. It’s one of the last democratic anarchist relics of 1960s optimism (we started in 1968) and a world away from the other money-grabbing Johnny Come Latelys like TLC et al.
Come on a course Max (written in haste before goingg to watch the footy with my mates so may contain a huge array of spelling and grammar errors) Best
Steve May
June 21, 2008 at 9:28 pm |
Steve
Many thanks for commenting. You make good points. I’d like to put this exchange on the front page. And congratulations on the novel – I note from your website that you will be doing some events in Manchester, and will try to attend one of your readings.
I don’t doubt that your Arvon tutors are talented creative people. I think it’s positive that you are providing them with a secondary income.
And I’ll take your word for it that Arvon can save writers time – you say it’s worked for you and that’s great. I’ll also take it on trust that Arvon is a ‘genuinely democratic communal experience’ and ‘one of the last democratic anarchist relics of 1960s optimism.’ Although I can’t help but note your irritation at ‘the other money-grabbing Johnny Come Latelys like TLC et al.’ What’s wrong with TLC? Surely you can handle a bit of healthy competition.
But I have reservations: do you know for a fact that writers become published simply because they’ve been on a course? You can point to published writers who have been on a course – but is that the same thing? And do you want attendance on an Arvon course to be a precondition of publication? Should writers have to stay at The Hurst or Totleigh Barton before their work is taken seriously? God, I hope not.
‘Getting all the irrelevancies out of the way… and just focusing on your work.’ Fair enough – but we are back to Stephen King’s point about the magic feather. You can’t always get rid of the irrelevancies. Most writers are in this for the duration. They have jobs, families and lives. Unless you plan to let people actually live at your centres year round, you must concede that writers must learn to focus on their work outside the Arvon environment. If people get the impression that they need the Arvon environment in order to write, this may inhibit their ability to write outside of it.
Personally, focusing on the work has always been easy for me, wherever I am. A laptop and a private room generally does the trick.
This brings me to the point about accommo and facilities. Thanks for clarifying re Lumb Bank. If you can guarantee single rooms and IT facilities, I’m happy to apologise and retract my statement that you can’t. I think this needs to be made clear, however, in promotional material. At the moment, the site says this:
Courses do not rely on the use of a computer and it’s worth noting that computer facilities vary widely from centre to centre. There is no IT support available at the centres, but centre staff will aim to fix any problems as soon as possible. You are welcome to bring your own laptop.
Put simply – I believe that to write well you need only two things:
1) A private room with a door you can close
2) A computer, to write on.
If Arvon can’t guarantee these two basic things – then why should people pay to go on its courses? Like I say, I can write at home and keep my £560. But I acknowledge the point that you are doing your best, and may not be able to provide single rooms and IT despite massive efforts to do so.
And re finances: again, I appreciate that you will give discounts for people on low incomes and that you try your best to be inclusive. But £260, if you’re not a high earner, is still a hefty chunk of change.
I like this sentence: ‘The act of writing is usually solitary but the preparation is often profoundly social.’ True enough. I work for an arts magazine and I organise and attend readings and launches. I meet and drink with writers and poets on an almost daily basis. In addition, I get out as often as I can, I’ve been around a bit and, in the normal course of things, I have known people of the range and diversity that you say come to Arvon. As you say, it’s fantastic to get together and get drunk with like minds.
What I’m objecting to here is not nights out, parties, pubs and bars. It’s the culture of the workshop: the ethos of fiction by committee that you see in so many creative writing programmes. This idea that everything has to be workshopped and endlessly discussed is the reason why these programmes have such a low graduate publication rate. I love being in a bar with writers and poets, talking about literature and life. Sitting in a circle of plastic chairs for two hours is a very different experience.
Plus: at bars, gigs and readings you can walk out if the night isn’t to your liking. At an Arvon retreat in the middle of nowhere, this isn’t so easy. Sorry mate, but although art is long, life is just too short.
I just don’t think it’s worth the risk and hassle. You’re right that I have made assumptions – but, when it comes to experiences we haven’t had, we all make these assumptions. I just have to trust my gut instinct, and what others tell me about their experiences with Arvon.
Perhaps in the future I’ll be able to take up your kind offer of coming on a course, and I’ll do so with an open mind.
Again, thanks for commenting. Feel free to respond to this; but if I don’t hear from you, best of luck with your novel.
June 22, 2008 at 10:55 am |
[...] A while back I wrote a post that was critical of Arvon and writing retreats in general. It has a response from Stephen May, a novelist who works for the [...]