Creative Writing in the UK

I will give a broad introduction to Creative Writing because I suspect it is less familiar as a subject
area to many – some might query if it is part of English Studies at all. I will largely leave as implicit its
obvious connections to the aims of this collaboration and project – entrepreneurship and the
common good - because I’ve a lot of exposition to cover. But some points I will at least start to draw
out.

What is Creative Writing?

Creative Writing is a relatively young term, first arising in the mid-nineteenth century, and one that
has come to describe writing, typically fiction or poetry but also script, which displays imagination or
invention, often contrasted with academic or journalistic writing.

It has been used in this way most prominently since the 1920s, it has become used as the term for a
specific strand of university and pre-university study. In the UK the rise of creative writing has been
one of the biggest developments in the study of literature and language over recent decades. It
offers a practice-based approach, a factor which is its self-defining and distinguishing feature. It is
often associated with English Studies departments, although not exclusively. By comparison with
much English literature and language study – which engages mostly in retrospective analysis and
theoretical consideration of historical or contemporary literary artefacts or language usage – the
academic discipline of creative writing is primarily concerned with participation in the act of writing.

Such study is assessed via the students’ literary outputs, but it often also involves reflective
commentaries about the process of writing. These are subsidiary components to the main output,
which is writing in one or more of a number of genres: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction (memoir,
biography, travel and nature writing, for instance), as well as scripts for a variety of media – film,
radio, stage and new media. In many ways it is similar in its practice-based ethos to the disciplines of
art, design, dance or performance, more than either English language or literature study in that
experience of the creative process is the central focus. Yet the currencies of English studies –
language and literary artefacts – are also prime tools in Creative Writing’s active study, its ‘canvas,
colour and back catalogue’ if you like.

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Who are Creative Writers?
This list offers just a quick sample - writers who have either taught or studied creative writing or
both. Some of them you might have heard of, some not:

Lorrie Moore, Carys Bray, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver,
Flannery O’Connor, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Rose Tremain, Angela Carter, Anne Enright,
David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury, Angus Wilson, David Edgar, Derek Walcott, Fey Weldon, Rachel
Cusk, Jackie Kay, Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion, Giles Foden, Jeanette Winterson, Robert Frost,
Martin Amis, Geoff Dyer, Ali Smith, Ted Hughes, Sarah Kane, Pericles Silveira, Blake Morrison,
Hanif Kureishi, Will Self, Joseph Heller, Jamaica Kincaid, Beryl Bainbridge, P.D. James, Richard
Holmes.

You’ll note that there’s a Brazilian in there. I’ll perhaps talk more of that at the end – where you can
question me about all of these writers if you wish.

These writers have made, and many continue to make, money from writing – but many of them
have also earned money from teaching. Creative Writing is traditionally taught by practitioners.
Markets in literary artefacts and literary education appear often to be co-dependent, but also to
implicate the broader range of creative industries. The level and mode of writers’ earning activities
can sometimes be surprising. For instance, Malcolm Bradbury who with Angus Wilson set up the first
and most prestigious UK Creative Writing programme at UEA, wrote novels and a considerable
amount of literary criticism, but also, while holding an academic post, scripted many episodes of the
popular UK TV crime series Frost - as well as several other TV dramas. Some of the writers above –
notably Fey Weldon and Joseph Heller – had profitable careers as copywriters. Many, probably most,
of the above have written journalism, and not just reviews.

The Writing Program at Iowa, the US’s most longstanding and prestigious Creative Writing
establishment has had a working association with tens of Pulitzer prize-winning authors – former
students and tutors. UEA – or the University of East Anglia to give it its full name - can list many
Costa Booker Prizewinning authors as former students and tutors – some feature above.

But it has to be said that Creative Writing is not just about the headliners, the named successes.
Creative Writing is one of the most popular subject-areas and encompasses many, many levels of
intent, approach, ability and achievement.

Why Creative Writing?

Why does Creative Writing appeal to HE students – and even to non-university students. At the
Open University we have a Start Writing Fiction MOOC (mass online open course) that has attracted
200, 0000 would-be writers in the last two years. Such popularity is typical.

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Creative Writing students have many motives for starting to write. Some will be drawn by the
transferable writing and reading skills, by the promise of being able to generate and develop new
ideas. Some will want to be professional writers, though as the novelist Rachel Cusk says, this might
be fewer than suspected:

‘Do students believe that doing a creative writing degree will turn them into a famous
author? Not in my experience. It is a course of study, like any other: it adds, rather
than creates, value.’

Cusk also says:

‘Language is not only the medium through which existence is transacted, it constitutes our
central experiences of social and moral content, of such concepts as freedom and truth,
and, most importantly, of individuality and the self; it is also a system of lies, evasions,
propaganda, misrepresentation and conformity. Very often a desire to write is a desire to
live more honestly through language; the student feels the need to assert a ‘true’ self
through the language system, perhaps for the reason that this same system, so intrinsic to
every social and personal network, has given rise to a ‘false’ self. A piece of music or a work
of art might echo to the sense of a ‘true’ self, but it is often through language that an adult
seeks self-activation, origination, for the reason that language is the medium, the brokering
mechanism, of self.’

Writing by this token is not solipsistic, autobiographical or therapeutic. Students may be writing
genre fiction and not about themselves at all. But it is a personally chosen endeavour – not
necessarily one of ‘enterprise’ in the business sense or with profit as its major goal. The occasional
writer can profit from the activity, yes – and university accountants tend to see too readily the likely
profits accruing from such a popular subject.

English and Creative Writing – how do they fit?

Within Creative Writing study, all aspects of the creative process feature under the ‘practice’
heading. Besides craft, form and technique, other aspects include the generation and development
of ideas, the ability to read as a writer, and pragmatic elements such as using a notebook and editing

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at various levels – the level of sentence, line, paragraph, scene, stanza, story and chapter. Reading as
a writer means reading with close scrutiny. This is where it fits well with English Studies. It focuses
on how writing is built and made, on how form relates to content. It involves close reading of
established works and also work in progress, often including the work of peers in writing workshops
or online equivalents. As Cusk says:

‘A well-written text is like a clock: its face shows an agreed representation of a bodiless
element – in this case, time – but if you take its back off you find a mechanism that can be
dismantled and readily understood. The writer-teacher can explain that mechanism.’

The rise in creative writing study in UK universities from 1970 onwards (from 1930 in the USA where
the subject originated) – and the accompanying steep rise in writers facilitating such study – can be
seen as ironic, contemporaneous as it was with certain propositions in literary criticism which
suggested the author was no longer necessary for the interpretation of texts (see essays such as
Roland Barthes’ ‘The death of the author’ and Michel Foucault’s ‘What is an author?’).

Malcolm Bradbury commented on his double identity as Literature academic and writer:

‘It seemed somewhat strange for us to be announcing the Death of the Author in the
classroom, then going straight back home to be one.’

But there is an unlikely fit between theory and practice. Neither critical theorists nor Creative
Writing teachers hold much tolerance for what might be termed the ‘cult of the author’, in which the
writer is seen as genius or mysterious progenitor of texts, their inscrutable talent and distinctive
biographies lending them almost divine legitimacy. In the era of the workshop, writing has come to
be seen as a question of endeavour, routine and assiduous editorial attention, with more emphasis
on creativity as process, on technical and practical consideration of the drafting regime, and on the
faltering, often inelegant bravery of first drafts.

In the commercial world of publishing there is a resilient fascination with authors, especially the
bestselling and canonical variety. However, within Creative Writing there is a focus on the
phenomenology of writing practice, with emphasis ‘on creativity as a dynamic process as well as on
creativity as a completed product’ (Carter, p. 340) – and concurrently in Literary studies there is a
revived critical and archival interest in the effect of editors on literary output. With this new focus
there has been a common, if not exclusive, shift in terminology towards the term ‘writer’ and away
from ‘author’ (and its connotations of authority).

It should also be noted how Creative Writing has influenced critical English. ‘Interventionist’
approaches to linguistic and literary analysis have gained greater credence, with the rise of
transformative forms of analysis whereby the reader intervenes as writer in the original text. As
Carter explains it, ‘[r]ewriting involves making use of a different range of linguistic choices’ in trying
them out, one also thinks through their properties and implications. Rewriting can consist of re-
centring a scene or chapter by, for example, writing in the voice of a peripheral character, writing in
a different tense or grammatical person, or by changing the geographical or historical setting. There
are numerous possible interventions and, as Carter suggests, this approach has a relationship with

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both creative writing and critical analysis; it is a more active mode of reading and participating in a
text ‘along a critical–creative–reading–writing continuum’ (p. 342).

Is Creative Writing rising?

In the US the subject was seen initially and predominantly as MFA-level study. In the UK it was
initially seen as an MA-level subject – following the launch of the MA programme at UEA with its first
(disputed) student – Ian McEwan, and the launch of similar programmes such as at Lancaster
University around the same time. The amount of Creative Writing provision at all levels has since
accelerated at a fast rate.

In the UK for the 10 years from 2003 to 2013:

 The number of universities offering BA courses (various combinations) rose from 24 to 83;
 The number of MA courses rose from 21 to 200;
 The number of PhD programmes from 19 to more than 50

This growth is still accelerating – and is no longer confined to MA provision. This isn’t just a UK
phenomenon. It follows a comparable rise in the US and other countries:

 The US’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) rose from 13
institutions in 1969 to 500 in 2011;
 The number of US Creative Writing degree courses rose from 79 in 1975 to 852
in 2010
 In Australia Creative Writing PhD programmes rose from 8 in 1999 to 31 in 2009
 Institutional membership of the European Association of Creative Writing
Programmes (EACWP) rose from 9 in 2005 to 23 in 2014.

What is Creative Writing Research?

The most common mode of Creative Writing research is creative practice – often referred to as
‘practice-based research’. The researcher explores, articulates and investigates via his or her practice
– the writing of poems, short stories, novels, creative nonfiction, plays and films. The creative
outputs and artefacts in themselves involve research, as do their formal considerations. Practice is
central, ‘critical or theoretical understanding is contained within, and/or stimulated by, that practice’
(NAWE p.11). Some results of practice-based research can include critical works, and the critical
elements can be connected to, or stand relatively free from, the practice that informs them.

The Creative Writing PhD student typically writes a book-length work together with an
accompanying critical commentary which focuses on aspects of the contextual analysis and
investigation. The first UK Creative Writing PhD student was at UEA in 1990 - Fadia Faqir, a Jordanian

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writer whose first novel Nisanit had been written as her MA dissertation at Lancaster. Since then
PhD programmes have become increasingly common in the UK and Australia, but not in the US
where the Master of Fine Art (MFA) remains the predominant top-level qualification in the subject.

As you have seen from the list of Creative Writers, the canon has come to be influenced, informed
and affected by Creative Writing. Style and form have also been affected. For instance, the short
story - often the modus operandi in creative writing study; he workshop has become the short
story’s stylistic studio. Ian McEwan produced a book of short stories in his MA year – First Love, Last
Rites.

And there has been experimentation. The second-person story, for instance, has proliferated in the
workshop era. This could be attributed to the workshop where a second-person narration is often
used in exercises, demonstrating different approaches to point of view while also illuminating
everyday linguistic gradations and combinations of intimacy and imperative command.

Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help short story collection (1985) is perhaps the apogee of the second-person
story. All in the second person, its stories parody the self-improver’s instruction manual. The
collection was written for Moore’s Creative Writing MFA dissertation, its stories emanate from the
poetics of the workshop. Yet on a commercial level, the headliners are again misleading. The short
story collection is commonly reputed to be disliked, ignored and never taken up by publishers.
Moore and McEwan are the exceptions. Short stories might be a natural output of the workshop, but
collections don’t sell and there are increasingly few venues to publish individual stories.

This is another example of the way in which Creative Writing outputs are often mismatched with
possible commercial or even literary outlets. Stories are not commercial or viable as potential for a
business plan, say, or a career opportunity. Poetry, in general, would offer a similar example. It is all
but impossible to make a living from publishing poetry alone.

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Creative Writing – earnings and entrepreneurship
The incompatibility between some of the literary outputs from Creative Writing and the commercial
market is striking. For instance, the Barbican Press was set up to publish some of the often-rejected
but nonetheless critically worthy novels produced on Creative Writing PhD theses.

But there are many commercially published works arising from Creative Writing MAs and PhDs. For
instance, I have two students writing their third novels as part of a PhD. Both have been relatively
successful – one had a novel picked in the US as Oprah’s ‘book of the week’. She has been translated
into over 20 languages (her latest novel has just been translated into Portuguese!). The other
student has met with similar success and critical acclaim; he too has been translated and now has a
publishing deal for his PhD novel. But that advance while substantial by comparison to any academic
publishing deal, is not big enough to sustain him for long. Neither student could survive on their
writing alone. Yet both were successful graduates of UEA’s MA – they are near the top of the range
of achievement within the subject area.

The 2015 Society of Authors EU Study on Remuneration found the following from a cohort of
respondents all of whom had at least 10 years’ experience in the industry:

 Average annual income for UK authors was £12,500

 This is compared to the single person minimum income standard at the time of £17,100.
 This is also compared to the average UK income at the time of c.£27,000
 Average total income from a writer’s latest book was c.£6,500
 Only 51% of authors in the study thought of writing as their main income source.

The figures above suggest that most writers by definition have a portfolio of occupations. This other
work includes teaching, journalism, translation, subtitling, copy-editing, copywriting, working in the
creative industries and a whole range of other part and full time employment. Some university
Creative Writing departments (for instance, Bath Spa) plan and teach towards this eventuality. They
ask their students to engage in external contacts (in their final undergraduate year) – with
businesses, venues, schools, publishers, publications. Students are required to write business plans
whatever their venture. The student projects range from writing classes in the community to
publishing a local events magazine to arranging international events. Some projects don’t necessarily
involve writing. Some projects can lead to long-term business ventures and/or direct employment.

But these business-focused aspects of study are relatively rare. Overall, for many, Creative Writing
study is a unique period of dedicated, concentrated focus on writing (and reading), which is not
repeated in working life – should the student progress to some level of ongoing practice.
Entrepreneurship features in both the inventiveness and innovations of the portfolio combinations,
some of the ventures engaged in, but also in the way writers manage to continue to write. Some
form small presses, for instance. Many are part of ongoing writing workshops and self-formed
organisations outside of official study. But much of this isn’t entrepreneurship in its conventional
usage.

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References – and items that have informed this discussion

Bradbury, M ed. (1995) Classwork London: Sceptre

Carter, R (2011) ‘Epilogue – Creativity: postscripts and prospects’ in Creativity in Language and
Literature: The state of the Art eds. Swann, J, Pope, R and Carter, R. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cowan, A (2016) ‘The Rise of Creative Writing’ in Futures for English Studes: teaching language,
literature and creative writing in Higher Education ed. Hewings, A; Prescott, L; Seargeant, P. London:
Palgrave Macmillan.

Cusk, R (2013) ‘In praise of the creative writing course’ in The Guardian 18 January.

Holland, S (2003) Creative Writing: Good Practice Guide Edgham: English Subject Centre.

McGurl, M (2009) The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP.

Munden, P (2013) Beyond the Benchmark: Creative Writing in Higher Education York: HEA
www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/disciplines/English/HEA_Beyond_the_Benchmark.pdf

NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education) (2008) Creative Writing Subject (Teaching and
Research) Benchmark statement www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/writing-at-
university/research.html

Neale, D (2016) ‘Creativity and Creative Writing’ in Creativity in Language eds. Demjen, Z and
Seargeant, P. Milton Keynes: OUP

Open University FutureLearn Start Writing Fiction MOOC

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/start-writing-fiction

QAA (2016) Creative Writing Subject (Teaching) Benchmark Statement

http://www.qaa.ac.uk/publications/information-and-
guidance/publication?PubID=3050#.V_4P0_krIdU.

Society of Authors EC Study of Author’s Remuneration (2015) www.societyofauthors.org