3 Things You Don’t Learn in Creative Writing Classes
This is possibly the most important post I’ve ever made for this series. Today, I’m going to share 3 things that you don’t learn in creative writing classes.
No one ever told me these things. No one talks about these things still, as far as I know. I had to figure them out for myself, and as far as I know I’m the only one talking about them. But they are very important if you want to write a book and get it published.
What they don’t tell you, #1: How to write a novel
I honestly don’t mean to throw shade by saying this, but in all the classes I ever took on how to write a novel, I never actually learned how to write a novel. I’m not saying I didn’t learn anything. I learned about craft, I learned about character development, I learned about starting a scene in the middle of the action. But none of those things are how to write a novel.
Even when the class was called how to write a novel, I didn’t learn how to write a novel.
Eventually, I decided that this was for a few possible reasons. One, the person teaching didn’t actually know how to write a novel. Even if they’d written one before. Two, the person teaching didn’t know how to teach how to write a novel, even if they did know how to write one. Or three, the person teaching it had never actually written a novel. Maybe they had edited one, maybe they had written short stories, but they had never actually written a novel.
Looking back, this seems obvious, but when you’re deciding what novel writing class to take, I would suggest taking one from someone who has written a novel. Not someone who has evidence in a novel because that’s different.
But just having written one isn’t enough. I had written a novel long before I actually had a process for writing. And I had a process for writing one long before I knew how to teach that process and felt comfortable doing so.
The problem is that when someone doesn’t have a process to teach, they aren’t sure what to do with class time, and so what they do with class time is mimic the classes they took, which in the case of writing is typically simply leading a workshop.
A workshop involves the people from the class giving each other feedback on their writing. It’s essentially useless. And I know that’s a controversial statement, but I say this having been in these workshops for years.
If you actually want to learn how to write a novel you need to learn from someone who has written one, who has a process to teach, and who has a track record of teaching it well.
In the novel writing classes I took over the years, none of us actually wrote novels by the end of them. In the novel and memoir writing program I teach now, 95% of people write their books by the end of it. I wouldn’t be running a novel writing program if it didn’t work. To me, if I were running a novel writing program and people didn’t actually write their books by the end of it, it would mean I was doing something wrong.
What they don’t tell you, #2: What actually matters the most in any writing you ever do
When I first wanted to write a novel, I signed up for writing classes. Naturally. I hadn’t taken one since college, that had been a terrible experience, it had been a few years since college, and I’d never written any fiction since then. Not even a short story. I was going from zero to writing a full-blown novel.
I took dozens of writing classes on everything from how to write beautiful sentences, to how to incorporate humor into your writing, to how to get published, and I probably re-wrote this book 12 times. Everyone read it in all of these classes. Or at least excerpts of it. My peers, my teachers… They all had feedback.
But not a single time over six years did anyone say to me what the actual problem was.
Not until I was completely burnt out, exhausted with my book and with myself, ready to give up because I could not find a literary agent who wanted to represent me and couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my draft, did I make a choice that changed everything for me.
I truly didn’t know why it wasn’t working. So I hired a freelance editor and asked: what’s wrong?
She read my novel, and told me: you are not writing with heart. My sentences were near flawless but that was not good enough.
No one has ever told me that before.
No one talks about this in creative writing classes because it’s cheesy, or seems cheesy. People, and I include myself, are all so worried about seeming smart and talented. But it’s heart that matters.
What does that mean? It mean showing up emotionally. Feeling something as you write. If you weren’t feeling something, the reader isn’t feeling something.
You are charting a passage for the reader, you are the front man for the reader. Where are you don’t go, they don’t go.
So when I work with writers, I talk about heart all the time. How to find it, how to access it, and how to work it into our writing. Because it’s the most important thing.
It doesn’t matter how well crafted your book is, if it doesn’t have heart, it’s not going to transport someone reading it, and if it doesn’t transport someone reading it, it won’t sell.
What they don’t tell you, #3: The 3 mindsets
Back when I was taking creative writing classes, no one ever talked about modes or mindsets. I heard neither of those words ever, not once. We all talked about writing as if there were one unitary mindset that you enter when you’re working on your writing, and it never changes.
Now that I’ve written and published three novels and worked with dozens of writers, I understand that not only is this not true, this is why so many writers get blocked and stuck before they even finish. It’s also why so many writers do finish but keep rewriting and rewriting their draft without ever actually making them better or sellable.
The truth is that there are three mindsets, and each of them has their role in your process. There’s the writing mindset which you want to be in when you’re writing. There’s the reading mindset which you want to be in when you’re reviewing your writing. And there’s the editing mindset which you want to be in when you’re diagnosing how to fix what’s not working in your writing.
If you try to write in an editing mindset or you try to read in an editing mindset, both of which most people do without realizing it, you’re going to work yourself into a dead end. The editor is not very good at writing. The editor is good at editing.
The editor is also not very good at diagnosing if writing is working or not, because the editor will always find things that are wrong with the piece of writing whether they are or not.
The editor is a hammer looking for a nail. It’s like the Energizer Bunny from those old commercials, the one that keeps going and going and going and running into things even when there’s nowhere to go.
That’s what the editor does: comes in and starts commenting on a crooked light fixture when the foundation of the house is crumbling.
Ready to write your book?
If you made it this far, I’m guessing that you are writing a book, or want to write a book.
If so, I want to talk to you.
When I’m not writing, my mission in life is to help talented writers write their dream books. I love it. I live for it.
Because before I published my novels, I first had to figure out how to write one. It wasn't easy because none of the writing classes I was taking showed me how to ACTUALLY write a novel.
Not until I had a newborn and very little time to write did I come up with a process. The process worked. I wrote my entire novel during my 8-week maternity leave. Now, I teach it in my program the Book Incubator and it works for dozens of other writers.
If you're curious to know more, I have a free video walking you through my exact process for writing a book. You can get it by clicking below and answering two questions to apply to the program. You get the video whether you join or not—no pressure to enroll.
Just click below to tell me a little bit about you and your book—you can fill out a form online. I’m so excited to hear from you!
