I teach a writing course.
Some may wonder why, given I have never legitimately published or authored a book.
That seems to be people’s expectation of a teacher of writing.
Yet I have a talent for writing, always have had, and enjoy the process of writing including the frustrations and disappointments.
I do actually plan to write a book. It will be non-fiction. And I find from my research that the process of writing is similar irrespective of what kind of writing one does.
And, unlike the writer from the Guardian who stated:
”Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.”
I find that it’s not so much the need for ‘having a crowd’ that people come to a writing course. It’s for the discipline. To actually put pen to paper. To commit scheduled time to a pursuit which brings them joy and expresses their spirit. For those for whom writing is a passion, the pleasure of writing includes being lost ‘in the zone’. For some reason people can’t find time to write. But when they are in a course, when given a prompt, they can write in a flowing state and the energy from putting ideas on a page is palpable.
Others come because they want to honour a memory, remedy the poor writing they see in a genre, simpy to see if they can do it. And there’s nothing wrong with any reason for writing.
The proof is in the value gained by others from reading.
And if no-one ever reads it, does it matter?