As some of you may know I’m currently studying Creative Writing and Media at university. I love it more than most things right now; bar books and family of course. But I found that this year was a lot of trial and error on how best to work with this course. I found that I don’t get a lot of contact hours and there’s A LOT expected of you right from the off. I thought maybe it might be a good time, coming to the end of my first year, to give some of you who might be thinking about it some tips on how to survive as a creative writing student. 

This is a key one for me. Making time to read is really important when you’re trying to be creative. You need to know what you like about books and what you don’t; what makes books appealing and what makes them interesting to read. I haven’t been the best as keeping up with reading novels in one go as I used to be, but I do find the time to read the odd chapter or two, be it on the bus to town to do my weekly shop or before bed at 3 am. I always try and find time because in the end this will help you become a better writer, not only for yourself but for your eventual readers. 

Never be afraid to carry around a pen and a notebook and whip that out when you sit down for coffee. Even if you’re just writing down character descriptions of people who walk by or are sitting across from you on the train, there’s always so much to write about. Keeping a writer’s journal is really interesting for you to look back on as you can often see the development of your own writing style as well as having a backlog of characters, plot ideas and random paragraphs that may be helpful to springboard you into writing after a creative slump. 

    

I mean this one. Take your laptop to class or have a very good ring binder. You never know what you’ll write in a workshop or a seminar, or what you’ll doodle on a random piece of paper that you want to keep and use at a later date. The things you write in class will often be things that you work on for future assignments and they’ll help you if you get into one of those slumps again. Also they’re really funny to look back on at a later date because hey, you and your classmates will write some really strange things together I’m sure and you’ll laugh when you get to read it back. My class for my writing stories module played the game where you write a line and pass it around the group when we were look at writing stories from the end and working back to the beginning. Yeah… someone ended up in love with their dog. Another person died. I had to read out some very odd things that day. 

I’ll say it again. You have to read as a writing student. I don’t really see any other way to get around it. Even if it’s just reading the work set by your tutor so you can discuss them in class, you still have to do that. Those are often the most important ones. But there is so much academic writing on how to write, and structuring stories and creating characters that you cannot ignore the academic side of a creative subject. It sounds like an oxymoron but really it’s incredibly important to read up on the background of what you’re doing because inevitably you’re going to have to write a reflective essay on what you’ve done. These in particular need your background research on the theory of writing and it’s so important to have this good solid understanding. Academic writing is often really interesting too. You can learn so much from reading journal articles or sections of ebooks on writing stories or poetry and in my case I’ve just finished an assignment on British Reality Television for my media theory module and I’ve learnt so much from reading up on a few books and articles. 

Lastly I really recommend editing your work. Even if you’re not sure you’ll ever publish it or you’ll never show anyone, sometimes it’s nice to sit down and edit a piece of work to make it better. This way when you find something months or maybe even years down the line you can find something you’ll read and be proud of. It might not even be your style anymore but it’ll still give you a sense of achievement. Also this can often springboard you back into writing and it’s something that I really love doing. Cup of tea, twinkly soundtrack music, maybe a couple of biscuits and editing work. There’s just something so relaxing about it all to me. However it can be the hardest thing to do, especially if you've written something you truly love and have to get rid of it.... kill your darlings as they say. 

So there are some tips that I have for budding creative writers. I’ve found this year to be a really experimental one full of learning about me and how I write and create characters, and finding that I actually do love poetry, quite a lot. I hope that you’re all well. Apologies for being missing in action a little recently, just been incredibly busy with assignments and such; but now I’m back to the reading for a while. New book reviews to come in the very near future.