Curtis Brown Creative - Approaching the end

It’s hard to believe that we are approaching the conclusion of the Curtis Brown Creative six-month novel writing course. The weekly sessions (every Tuesday punctuated by the occasional Wednesday) have become a central part of my life over the last six months. I’m already anticipating a keen sense of loss once it’s all over.

 

My fourteen fellow students have been so generous with their time both within the sessions and more acutely with their evenings and weekends to provide such detailed feedback on the extracts we have all submitted. Do the maths; fourteen other students, three 3,000 word extracts each, equates to 126,000 words critically evaluated. But for me this has been one of the most gratifying and supportive aspects of the course.

 

As writers I suppose we all seek validation for our writing. However, more important are the constructive criticisms, no matter how hard it may be to hear them at the time. Personally I felt a little bruised immediately after my tutorial with Anna, but once I’d had a chance to reflect on what she’d said, to process her criticism, I realised that in most cases she’d been spot-on. I will be forever indebted. Out with the red pen then!

 

The peer feedback sessions (along with those harsh but fair tutorials from Louise and Anna) have helped to shape my novel “Ilona”. I feel that it’s a radically different and greatly improved novel now from where it sat when I first submitted my extract to Anna and Rufus to apply for a place on the course. The process has helped me to slowly change “Ilona” into the novel that I originally aspired to write, rather than what I had written. It’s an important distinction.

 

I have been re-writing “Ilona” throughout the last six months, a process which is still ongoing. My issue now is trying to determine just how much further work is needed at this stage.

 

If I’m honest with myself my aims at the outset of the course were to improve “Ilona”; to make it the best novel I could possibly write, alongside the longer term aim of securing literary representation. I feel certain that most of my fellow students had similar aims.

 

My short-term aim is now to complete the current re-write, incorporating much of what I regarded as valid criticism and largely ignoring the comments that I felt were made without any innate understanding of what I was seeking to achieve.

 

That can still seem like a Sisyphean task (analogies of rolling boulders uphill can step forward) but it’s one I’m embracing. Just once in a while I’ll write something that has me punching the air both metaphorically and literally and just in that brief moment I feel it’s all been worthwhile.

 

It turns out that that the act of writing can sometimes be the best part of the whole process. No matter what happens for me in the future just occasionally the craft of writing turns out to be its own reward. Who would have known?