Miscellany

The Write Place for Saturday 31st May 2008

Published in The Bay of Plenty Times


Over the past month I’ve been thinking deeply about the difference between being a writer – when fame and fortune beckon, ha ha ha! – and being in love with the writing process. I came to the conclusion that most writers have something of both within them. I was first published at nine – in the local Hong Kong daily - a prize-winning poem artfully decorated with monkeys to make it more appealing. Ah, the innocence and triumphs of my youth.

Last year I was delighted when Reed published Poetry Pudding, a compilation of poems by Kiwi poets for Kiwi kids that I had assembled and worked on for nearly two years. This year I was even more delighted when it was named a ‘Notable Book of the Year’. I was thrilled to bits in April when North & South, which is my favourite magazine, published an article I’d written on feral cats. I liked working with editor Virginia Larson. I liked the responses I got from readers. I liked the money, too.

I also like the writing process; sometimes, I suspect, at the expense of ‘being a writer’.

Ultimately what matters for me is that when I’m writing, I’m focused, involved and enormously happy. I feel about writing like I used to feel about library work: “This is so much fun, I ought to be paying you.” (Note to editor: Cover your ears.)

This bout of deep thinking was triggered by a remark tossed out by Sue Emms, my Whakamarama friend and writing buddy. Sue and I worked together to develop the online Diploma in Creative Writing course for Waiariki Institute of technology. Later other tutors joined us – the late lamented Kingi McKinnon, James George, poet Owen Bullock and Rotorua-based children’s writer Sharon Whills. What we teach our students is that ‘the writing process’ is the means by which you become a writer.

Naturally, over the years, the course has evolved, broadened, changed, and most of my writing so far this year has been concentrated on something absolutely new. Indian Writing in English (IWE) deals with a fascinating and hugely respected genre that has garnered fame, fortune or both for writers as diverse as Tagore, Naipaul, Rushdie, Desai, Seth and Roy.

I joke that my main qualification for creating IWE was being born in an elephant stable in Jhabulpor. In fact, because of that, I’ve been reading books about India and by Indians for over four decades. So IWE was a rewarding undertaking for me both as a teacher and as a writer. I hope it proves equally rewarding for those who embark upon it.

IWE encourages the exploration of the Indian literary tradition, and what it means to write authentically in this particular ‘ethnic voice’. To find out what it means to be Indian.Writers write what is known to them; and about what fascinates them as unknown and worth exploring. I had a chance to do both in creating this module. IWE also reinforces a belief I hold dear: good fiction and great literature from all the countries of the world is one of the best means there is to explore other cultures and other forms of being.

IWE will, I hope, play an important role in this - as has our course on Māori writing.Though writing the module was a challenge, it was also enormous fun, and yes, I did get paid! I was responsible for the main text. Sue, who is lead tutor on the Diploma in Creative Writing, was responsible for tweaking and transforming that text into student-friendly teaching on Moodle (the program Waiariki uses to deliver its online courses.)

The remark she so casually threw out was this: “Jenny, I did a word count, and you wrote 40,000 words for IWE.”

That is book length, and excludes all the words that didn’t make it to the final draft; that were lost when I revised and rewrote for ‘best words in best order’. Is it writing that will bring me fame or fortune? Probably not. Did it fully utilise my experience and expertise of the writing process. You bet.

Writers don’t always end up in publications on shelves in bookshops and libraries, like Joy Cowley and Margaret Mahy. They don’t always make it as front page news like Sebastian Faulks has done with his new James Bond adventure.

Yet still they are writers: and writers write.

For details of the Diploma in Creative Writing go to http://ctc.waiariki.ac.nz.

Labels: indian writers english writing orkshops

posted by Jenny Argante @ 5:59 AM