Last week, I gave a talk at the 2023 Mosman Youth Awards in Literature about the value of the teenage mind. Thank you Mosman Library and Mosman Council for organising the awards night! As judge of the Senior Prose section, I wanted young writers to realise that their ideas, thoughts and feelings were good enough to form the basis of any story they wanted to write. They didn’t always have to write about subjects suggested by teachers at school, or restrict themselves to what they thought they should write about, especially when writing for readers in the real world.
This year, the Senior Prose section received many wonderful stories of fabulous quality and variety, as always. Stories about worldwide affairs, contemporary societal issues, complex relationships, the past and the future. But the writers who stood out, and who therefore made it onto my shortlist, were those who put something extra into their stories. “Something of yourself,” I told them, “from yourself.”
The romantic poet William Wordsworth once said:
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
Like most forms of creativity, good writing comes from both skill and art, working together.
- Skill comes from developing a learned understanding of your chosen genre and a lot of practice.
- Art, though, comes from within. It starts with an inclination to express yourself in some way, then that inclination builds into a passion for the subject matter at hand, you add a degree of talent for understanding and harnessing emotion and thought, then you finish with a willingness to share some part of yourself with others.
Recently, I also gave a talk at Ascham School for Girls about how to maximise students’ creative writing to showcase their skills for higher marks in their Year 12 HSC (I’ve been an English tutor for years now). But when it comes to writing for readers in the real world, it’s less about showcasing skills and more about revealing a part of yourself.
Whether fiction or non-fiction, good creative writing should include meaningful elements of you as the writer – expressing what is deep inside you, in your heart, in your mind, what makes you human, what makes you vulnerable, what makes you think – and getting all of that out and onto paper. As writers, it’s our job to open ourselves up when we write, be honest about what we see in the world, as well as in ourselves, and write from that place of raw exposure. It takes great bravery to do this at all, let alone regularly enough to become good at it. But if writing were easy, then everyone would do it! They don’t, because it is hard!
I was reminded of this myself last month, when I was asked to read aloud a life story I’d written – I’d won a prize in a literary competition and, as well as money, reading out my story was part of the ‘award’. It was also a challenge, however, because I still felt so much of what was in my story, deeply and honestly, so my throat kept tightening with emotion as I read. I had to pretend I was taking a purposely pensive pause just to swallow and loosen my throat. I had spilled my innermost thoughts onto the page, as I always do, so in that moment I was laying myself bare to an audience of strangers. But that is art.
Afterwards, I received emails saying how much people had LOVED my story. That of course meant just as much to me as the money and recognition, because I had connected with others, allowed myself to be vulnerable and open in a world where we’re so often shut off from others, and my story had resonated with people.
The stories on my 2023 MYAL shortlist also resonated because the young writers in question had shared a part of themselves with us, through their words, and we had connected with that. So, my closing remarks were to thank them for putting in that extra effort, and to ask them do it more often!
“Allow yourself to crack open,” I told them. “Be courageous. Tell stories from your heart. Use your skills of course – don’t forget story structure and the devices that can aid your expression – but speak from within, and readers will hear you.”
I’d give the same advice to any writer, irrespective of age. And it’s something I constantly remind myself too.
