Discovering yourself as a writer.

The face-to-face experience.

In my long life it has seemed inevitable that my teaching self and my writing self have found their truest expression in leading workshops in all kinds of set settings. I met Mary Davies, whom you read about in my last essay, link below, in a workshop I presented in Cumbria.

The Exceptional Mary D

The wonderful fact is that every workshop has thrown up some intensely interesting creative people whom I would never have met in any other setting. My last workshop - before I was condemned by Covid and other afflictions to live the life of a hermit - was where I met Donna Maynard, now a very good friend and colleague in terms of both her writing and artistic talents.

The truth is that workshops can act as deadlines for aspiring writers. I myself was motivated throughout my writing life by the annual deadline the end of November for many of my novels. One of my editors once told me, ‘I look forward to 30th November and receiving your manuscript for my final task of the year.’ (Thank you Headline!)

My favourite and most memorable workshops were held at the elegant Bishop Auckland Town Hall library. I was always helped and supported by the equally elegant Gillian Wales, a gifted librarian and a great supporter of literary readers and writers in her community. She has been also a very significant person in the emergence of the nearby museum of Mining Art, again reflecting the creative nature of the community here in South Durham.

Bishop Auckland Town Hall & Mining Art Gallery

This element of deadlines has proved to be a good discipline as for me as I progressed to set deadlines for later novels and collections that I self-published. It has also proved to be the basis for these regular essays on my Substack series.

Of course, deadlines can work in several ways. First there was the weekly deadline which I met myself for several years, writing a column in the Northern Echo which I enjoyed very much.

There may be self-defined deadlines: these deadlines might be self-imposed by the individual writer or be signalled by the leader of a workshop, who might suggest themes or prompts for the next workshop.

In the present day the Internet has developed its own version of these aspects of the writing process, where the writers as a whole group never meet each other face-to-face, but communicate online and supply a level of critique for their co-writers’ writing.

I have seen that this is quite successful for some of my fellow writers, as it can be very encouraging, endowing the creative process with the stimulus of a meaningful deadline: also, of being a member of a community of fellow writers.

That being said, I have to admit that a strong element of my joy in the workshop process is the face-to-face encounter with aspiring writers – their faces, voices, and their bright eyes full of private knowledge and insight about to be shared. All this pervades the room as the participants discover their own identity as a writer.

It is almost as l though, in presenting the workshop experience, I am giving members permission to recognise themselves as writers.

The most dramatic aspect of these face-to-face experiences were the years that I spent as writer in residence in a women’s prison. The atmosphere in these workshops and encounters was buzzing. The were well attended and I got to know a number of women well through their engaging presence and their writing, which was both interesting and open. I learnt a lot. Through the years I published several collections of their work, so they had a different kind of record of their time in prison to take home with them. I wrote about this in September, and the link is below.

WRITING BEHIND BARS