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Because I’m compelled to��I couldn’t imagine not writing. That’s the most common answer I get from fellow writers when I ask what drives them to write. It’s probably true, but compulsion isn’t always good or attractive : substitute ‘drinking�� for ‘writing��, and we may have a better understanding of how we’re seen by our families and friends. Along with that compulsion there is, I’d hope, a conviction that writing is a worthwhile pursuit, something worth doing even when there’s no money, no publishing deal, and indeed no compulsion. And everyone else is heading for the beach.

With a new year beginning, I’ve made a list to remind myself of the rewards of writing, some entirely selfish, some altruistic, hardly any of them commercially sound. Something to dig out when the compulsion fails. I thought I’d share it with you.

Ten reasons for writing:

Making something. We humans are creative animals and creating stuff—be it furniture, music or novels—may be the most distinctive and satisfying thing we do. We may have to wait until we contemplate the fruits of our labours, but there are few greater joys in seeing, perhaps, after several passes, something greater than we thought ourselves capable of. And the actual labour isn’t all slog and angst. There are times when the writing’s going well, when we’re on a roll, that there’s nothing we’d rather be doing though our families are more likely to see us when we walk away from the writing desk in frustration at the other times. Perhaps there’s the basis of a new-year resolution there for some of us.
Reaching others. It’s not what compels me to write, but for me, the greatest satisfaction comes from something I’ve written landing at the right time to make an impression on a reader, prompt a response. Perhaps it’s a laugh, or an emotional reaction to the beauty of the prose (I suspect I don’t pull that one off too often) or a decision to change their life.
We’ve all been impacted by books, and those books weren’t always the best-written or most profound. Just the right words at the right time. Did we write to the author to tell them? I’ve had a few cards and letters and personal approaches at events, full of surprises: from people prompted to have an autism assessment to parents naming their baby for a character, to a guy who pulled up stumps and moved countries. But what we authors see, if we see anything, is only the tip of the iceberg. We’re doing more than we know.
Changing the world. ��Just after The Rosie Effect was published, Anne and I were invited to chat with Bill and Melinda Gates who were enjoying the series (we made a little video too it’s up on the web somewhere). I had more than one request to get in their ears about someone’s pet project—everyone telling me how privileged I was to have the attention of such an influential couple for an hour or so. But…they’ve read, at least, all the Rosie books: I’d call that a minimum of twenty hours of attention.
That’s the level of access that authors of novels and other long-form writing have. Unlike the writer of an eight-hundred word opinion piece or even extended article in a magazine, we have the time to win over our readers rather than just reinforce their prejudices.
Fiction is hugely influential. Ask someone about autism (a theme of my Rosie series) and their reference point is likely to be Rain Man. Or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Or The Big Bang Theory.
My partner Anne Buist writes in the mental-health space. The Best of Adam Sharp explores love and fidelity. Two Steps Onward deals with faith, mid-life reinvention, facing death. Big, important issues. A good novel deals with them subtly, showing rather than telling, keeping the author’s opinion off the page, giving our readers a chance to spend extended time with the ‘other��, perhaps take a journey with them, perhaps inhabit their head.
Even if our books sell in the thousands rather than the millions…for most of us, that’s a bigger audience than we’re likely to reach in any other way.
Providing companionship. For many of us, growing up, books were important companions, often taking the place of sympathetic human company. As an adult, I find that connection more in non-fiction: In my ‘best reading�� in The Age this year, I cited books by autism advocate Pete Wharmby, writing teacher Lee Kofman and a guy I’m unlikely to have a chance to meet in person, one Bob Dylan, as giving me the chance to hang out with someone and listen to them shoot the breeze on a topic that interests me, and that they know a lot about. But it applies to fiction too. When I read Haruki Murakami’s novels (I’m thinking especially of Killing Commendatore) I’m enjoying his company and that of his characters as much as the prose and the story per se. He’s taking me on a journey, I’m happy to trust him. I give my own readers a chance to hang out with me, without having to buy me drinks.
Self-improvement. Some of us write deliberately for therapy, and some of us get unexpected insights or wake-up calls from the process. All of us learn to do a bunch of things better, from observation to understanding human dynamics to communication—life skills. And even if we know how to do it already—and many don’t—we learn to how to manage a big, daunting project and to hold the mindsets (EQ anyone?) needed to persevere.
Contributing to the art pool. We read, we listen to music, we watch television. Writing gives us our chance to put something back in, to fulfill our part of the artistic ‘social contract��.
Supporting the book economy. If our book is published, it becomes the centre of an enterprise involving editors, printers, publicists, booksellers, readers and more. We’re helping to keep all those guys in ‘regular jobs�� in work. And if it’s published internationally—we’re doing our bit for the balance of trade.
Hanging with cool people—and being cool yourself. When I worked in IT, only other ITers were interested in what I did. (Anne, as a psychiatrist, has the opposite problem: people very interested in getting free advice). But now I’m a writer: tell me about your latest book and I’ve always wanted to write.�� At festivals, I�� get to meet the authors of the books I’ve loved (or not) and ask them the questions I get asked: When’s the movie coming out?�� And yes, I do get a kick when I hear that someone I admire has read one of my books. Like when one of the Beatles ‘liked�� one of my tweets
Making a buck. We’ve been told so many times that writing doesn’t pay. I don’t know many people who went into writing expecting to get rich, or even to make a living at it, and that’s probably a wise course, but some do. I’ve made a living as a novelist for a few years, as have a few people I know. And a larger number have been able to put together a financially viable ‘writing life��, perhaps combining teaching or commercial writing with their more artistic projects. That advance or royalty or lending-rights payment isn’t nothing—and you just may get lucky (or justly rewarded).
Modelling a way of working and living. The reasons above may not be the ones that our kids or their teachers, relatives and counsellors are focusing on when they talk about work and careers. But here we are, doing a ‘show don’t tell�� to demonstrate that there are other ways.

I’ve surely missed something—perhaps the most important reason that you write. Maybe tell me about it in the comments (if you find this post somewhere that allows comments). But remind yourself about it anyway.

Yeah, yeah, it was Pete Best.

‘Where do you get your ideas?�� Asked of a novelist, it’s often a shallow question, implying that the work stands or falls by its premise. But at another level, it’s a deep, practical enquiry, because the entire writing task is about coming up with ideas, from inventing story and characters to solving a plot problem to crafting an elegant sentence—a process of constant creativity.

I’d argue that for most of us, creativity is our scarcest, most limiting resource. If I’m stopped, it’s more likely because I’m stuck for ideas than because I’ve run out of time. We all want to be more creative.

Yet few writers work on their creativity as they work on other aspects of their writing. As someone who has studied creativity, tries to foster it and attempts to teach it, I still struggle to convince other writers that I actually use the techniques I recommend. Cute idea but�� So, here’s a short case study of deliberately-applied creativity: my recent novella, Creative Differences.

Asked ‘What comes first—the words or the music?��, songwriter-for-hire Sammy Cahn replied, ‘The phone call.�� For me, in the twenty-first century, it was an email from Audible: Would I be interested in writing a novel of about 30,000 words to be produced initially as an audiobook. I was interested—but where would I get my idea?

At the time, I was completing my how-to book on writing, The Novel Project, in which I’d tackled this problem. One suggestion I offered was: Keep a list of ideas and look to combine two or more of them. A single idea is unlikely to be original, but a combination of two is less likely to have been used before. I had the list, but nothing spoke to me. So I focused on the point of difference: this was to be an audio book, and my writing should somehow reflect that. I held that thought for a few weeks, coming back to it almost every day, knowing that if I worked hard at a problem, then let it incubate, my subconscious would eventually step up.

It duly did, with what turned out to be a pretty terrible idea. But you can’t expect a new idea to be as strong as something old that’s been worked and refined. You have to give it a chance—play with it, see the possibilities, do that working and refining.

That pretty terrible idea was to write a story that mimicked the meters of the songs on an album: one chapter per track. Growing up the era of LPs, I thought of an album as having two sides, which suggested that the book could be in two parts. But I frequently use a conventional three-act structure which actually breaks a story into four parts of roughly equal length (Act 2 is split into 2a and 2b, divided by the midpoint). The musical equivalent would be a four-sided album: a double album, which would also give me more tracks to work with. (Well, one musical equivalent: if I’d gone for a symphony in four movements, the story from here would be quite different).

I decided to run with The Beatles ‘White Album��; as the most iconic, familiar and diverse among double albums: diversity was important if I didn’t want all the chapters to sound the same. And The Beatles�� creative productivity was legendary; they were good company to invite in. The record has thirty tracks. Thirty thousand words would equate to 1,000 words per song. Neat.

I quickly discovered that it’s hard to write readable (or listenable) prose in the rhythm of Back in the USSR, the opening track, at least not without the crutch of music. I was likely to face the same problem with the rest of the songs.

Meanwhile, I needed a second idea: since my first idea was stylistic, I was looking for plot. I revisited my ideas list, and now one of them spoke to me, except that it had already been checked off: my ‘how to�� book on writing. But why not dramatise the conflict between different approaches to writing? Somewhere in my mind, I must have the been thinking of the conflict between The Beatles�� writers, Lennon and McCartney, and the eventual break-up of the band for that most clichéd of reasons: creative differences. I had my title.

At this point, it’s harder to describe the creative process, because two ideas are playing off each other and developing in a non-linear—organic—way, akin to what happens when you introduce two interesting people and the conversation starts. Mechanically, I was walking around (literally walking around: ‘Trust no thought arrived at sitting down,�� said George Sheehan, the running doctor—I do a creativity walk or light workout every day).

A bunch of thoughts were in play. I could personalise the tension between two writers with different approaches and ambitions, and make them a couple working on a book together, so that the differences had consequences. I knew this territory. My partner and I have co-written two books, and people are always interested in how that works: ‘�ٴDz�’t you fight all the time?�� For the sake of the story, the answer would be ‘yes��.

Having connected Lennon and McCartney with my two writer protagonists, I could draw inspiration from The Beatles. The two songwriters, eschewing the joint approach that had brought them early success, had largely written and sung their own songs for the album. Perhaps my two protagonists, likewise pursuing their own ambitions, could narrate the chapters that corresponded to their alter egos�� songs. As for alter egos…who’d be the woman? There’s a theory that Bob Dylan’s song Just Like a Woman is about John Lennon�� Everything you know is fuel for the creative process.

My concept was developing into an structure of thirty chapters with narrators changing according to the songwriter or lead singer. Except that the White Album features all four Beatles in those roles: George Harrison sang four songs and Ringo Starr two. What could I do with this? Two more characters?

Harrison inspired a junior writer learning from our protagonists, perhaps coming between them, and trying to carve out their own career. Throw in a bit of sexual tension or misunderstanding to heighten the conflict. As for the fourth narrator, with a small part, the agent or publisher seemed like a good choice. They’d have their own agenda. I recalled the unflattering description of Ringo as ‘the luckiest drummer in the world��; how about making the publisher the luckiest small publisher in the world, accidentally pulled into our protagonists�� success and now, comedically, struggling to keep up.

So I arrived at my four central characters inspired by (but only partially shaped by) their Beatle counterparts. Scott (McCartney) would be the planner, extroverted, technically skilled, commercially focused, working on the next bestseller as if it was a building project. His partner, Emily (Lennon) would be the tortured artist, writing about her own issues, wrestling with writers�� block, valuing critical acclaim over sales. Piper (Harrison) would be the socially-concerned student of Emily and mentee of Scott—dealing with their contrary advice. I tried out names from the Beatles�� songs, but used only one: Gideon for the Ringo character. It inspired a slim, bearded hipster.

After all that, I had enough of an original concept that it no longer needed to be written in meter. I abandoned that idea, not before time, as everyone around me was quick to point out. But it had done its job in getting the creative process going and could now be discarded. Well, not completely. I’d spent so long on Back In the USSR that I thought I might open the book with a few lines that mimicked it.

I turned to plotting the story. The set sequence of narrators—dictated by the order of the tracks, which I wasn’t going to mess with, yet—was a real constraint. Constraints—not too loose, but not too tight—provide a great environment for creativity. This one felt about right.

The songs themselves played the role of random words from the dictionary—prompting ideas for what I wanted to say and how I’d say it. (Incidentally, George Harrison used the technique to inspire his best-known song on the album, opening a book at a random page and finding the words gently weeps.)

The singer of Back in the USSR (a song which was itself inspired by the music of Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys) tells us he’s flying home. That suggested Scott (the designated narrator for that McCartney song) returning from an unsuccessful solo book tour, and imagining another joint book as the way forward. The song for the next chapter, Dear Prudence (‘won’t you come out to play / greet the brand new day��) suggested Emily had been hunkered down in her room with her solo project…with writer’s block? Could this be the core of the dynamic between them?

In The Novel Project, I suggest going to a shooting range to get the feel of shooting a gun before writing about it. When I hit Lennon’s Happiness is a Warm Gun, I was prompted to think of Emily doing just that. But she doesn’t write crime or action. Could I give her a reason for doing so? And an important story element emerged.

Sexy Sadie (‘You made a fool of everyone��) gave me the idea of Piper going public with some information that would be damaging to Scott and Emily. Glass Onion suggested the literary pretensions of student writers in class, which gave me an opportunity to introduce Piper. And so on.

Some songs generated valuable ideas; some didn’t suggest anything. Revolution 9, the penultimate, chaotic, song on the album, suggested a crazy writing bender to produce the manuscript (Emily’s �� it’s a Lennon song) that would mark the climax of the book—the achievement of the hero’s goal. Bungalow Bill gave me nothing—at least not consciously.

The outlining process was as easy as it’s ever been for me, and I was happy with the result: thirty chapter summaries, in four acts corresponding to the four sides. One over the act breaks was not quite right, and I ended up shifting it back one chapter / song. The geek in me railed against it; my practical side told me that the album was ultimately a tool, not a straitjacket. Not a challenge to be met at the expense of the writing.

Rather than begin writing, I went back to the well for further ideas. I played that album through at least a dozen times while I worked out, thinking of each chapter as I listened to the corresponding track: ‘what could I take from this?�� After each side, I’d stop and make notes—thoughts escape too easily. It was the random-word technique, and, as expected, it produced results, though there are a few songs I never want to hear again.

As I drafted, I listened to the relevant song before I wrote each chapter. It didn’t help much; I’d likely mined what I could. Indeed, I’d become too invested in referencing the songs: I really wanted that Bungalow Bill chapter to have something of the song in it. Maybe just the opening line. Or at least the opening word. ‘Hey��.

Fortunately, I had sanity checkers around me. It was the time of Covid and I was sharing my progress on weekly walks with fellow writer Tania Chandler. ‘It’s only scaffolding,�� she said. ‘You throw it away when you’re finished.�� True, and the metaphor sent me down another creative alley. A friend pointed me to Seamus Heaney’s poem, Scaffolding, which is about romantic relationships. I could use that—and did. Writing together would be the basis of Scott and Emily’s relationship: would they need it forever or could they see it as scaffolding? It offered a nice resolution to their creative differences.

So I wrote and rewrote the novella, forgetting about The Beatles after the first draft. Some references crept in unconsciously. ‘We don’t know how lucky we are,�� says Scott, mimicking a line from Back in the USSR. ‘Piper said what she said she said’—an odd formulation containing the title of a Beatles song from another album. And there’s a minor character named Michelle.

I asked that the audiobook begin with the sound of a plane landing, and end with massed strings, as the album does, as an auditory nod to its origins. But without those cues (and the background that I’m sharing now) the connection to The Beatles would be invisible to most readers. When I came to adapting it as a screenplay, I let go completely. There’s no chapter structure or narrators in a movie.�� Nor would those opening lines in meter, the remains of my earliest idea, play any part. The last of the creative scaffolding, having served its purpose, was discarded.

I was left with my story and could rest easy that The Beatles�� copyright owners would not be after me. But the story would never have been written had not those two disparate pieces of work, in a deliberate application of a frequently scoffed-at creativity technique, come together.

If you’d like to see the result, it’s available as an audio book and is in print on Jan 10, 2023 along with a bunch of short stories: Creative Differences and Other Stories.

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�� including some footage on the Camino��

In August last year, my partner, Anne Buist, and I spoke at the ADMA Creative Fuel Conference on some of the creativity techniques that we use in writing, particularly in developing plot and dealing with structural problems.

I have a bit of a background in design theory (as you’ll know if you’ve read previous posts), Anne’s a professor of psychiatry and both of us are novelists.

So, here are a few of them �� topic headings and a quick summary of the points.

Look for what you can use. We said this at the beginning of the presentation and it’s a good rule for any learning environment. Have a current problem (or two or three) in mind as you listen, look for anything that might help or stimulate a line of thinking and don’t be distracted by the negatives. We’ve had some of our best ideas listening to our ‘worst�� teachers, critics and editors. If you get one thing you can use from the few minutes it takes to read this list, good. �ٴDz�’t write to us about the other nine!
Focus your creativity where it matters. If you’re looking to write a popular bestseller, plot is going to be critical, so make sure you give it a proportionately large amount of your total writing time and throw the full creativity tool set at it.
Wear the lucky socks �� if they’re really lucky. Which is to say, find out what works for you and keep doing it. Try what others recommend by all means, but evaluate it. No point spending an hour doing free-form writing every morning if it isn’t helping you. If the best ideas come in the shower, or after a run or that first drink (it’s seldom the third) then do those things deliberately—or schedule creative thinking time around them.
If you’re looking for a creative idea (e.g. for a story!), look to combine two ideas. Idea A (a story about running a marathon) is not likely to be unique. Nor is idea B (writing a story using three tenses and three grammatical persons). But A+B (a story about a marathon using three tenses and three grammatical persons) is far less likely to have been done before. You can read mine at
Embrace your weirdness. Or at least identify it. At the Romance Writers Conference in Melbourne last year, I played did the ‘stay standing if you…�� exercise with a big audience of writers. There were people who had PhDs, had walked the Camino de Santiago, who identified as indigenous, etc �� but very few who could match any given combination of 3. Those rare combinations can be the basis of an original perspective. Think: What makes you unique? What story can you tell that others can’t? What can you bring from another field to inform your story?
Redraft. Good writing is re-writing—and the creative perspective on this is that with each re-write you bring all your creative resources to the job, starting each time from a higher base. So, with that first draft, don’t get it right, get it done. Then improve. Repeat.
Put it aside for a while. If there’s one thing most creativity studies show, it’s that creativity needs an incubation period. When you’ve reached a point of satisfaction, put the work aside��and work on something else. Which means you should have at least a couple of projects going at once.
Separate the identification of problems from their solution. Plenty of people are good at finding problems, but not at fixing them. You’re the writer. If you want help with a solution, make that a separate exercise—and save it for the problems you can’t solve yourself in your own style.
Give solutions to problems a chance. The first question is not ‘Why won’t this solution work?�� but ‘How can we make it work?�� And remember, solutions typically generate new problems—sometimes opportunities. �ٴDz�’t reject a solution because it’s going to necessitate work elsewehere.
Make the magic routine. When you succeed in solving a problem, look at how you did it. Strive to make that something you can do at will so you can save your creativity for the tougher problems.

I’ve just finished a rewrite of my novel-in-progress, The Best of Adam Sharp—which is to say we’re in the midst of the editing process. This is my fifth book (including two non-fiction), so, while I can’t claim to be a veteran, I have learned a bit about the editing process from the writer’s perspective.

I thought I’d share a few of the things that I have to remind myself of—consciously and constantly—if I want the best result for my book, my sanity and my relationship with my publisher. I haven’t self published: if you’re going that route, you’ll need to adapt the advice as you see fit.

Editing is not a hurdle; it’s about working together to get the best possible book. School, university and (for some of us) academic publication has given us a model in which we do whatever it takes to satisfy someone else—to get our work over the line. Once you have a publisher who’s accepted your book, forget about pleasing them and start seeing them as a partner in getting the result you (and your readers) want.
Your mindset is We��re making it better. Every time you open that document, that’s what you’re trying to do. When you hit save, most of the time you’ve achieved that. Sure, save a backup in case you decide to go back. You hardly ever will. But from time to time, look back and see how far it’s come from the last time you thought it was finished.
Familiarise yourself with the editing process—and the basic terminology. You’re (possibly) going to go through developmental, structural, stylistic (line) and copy editing. You should know what these are, what to expect from your editor at each stage, and what you will be expected to give back. �ٴDz�’t waste your editor’s time having them teach you terminology, but do ask them to summarise what their approach to your book will be.
Negotiate the mechanisms with your editor. Many editors have a love of paper compared with electronic formats, which frequently makes tracking of changes difficult. I hate making changes to a printed document, after being accustomed to working with a word processor—the page ends up an unreadable mess. Once it’s typeset, the cause is generally lost: I push to leave this as late as possible. If editors are changing your document directly, insist on changes being highlighted / tracked. (Of course they’d do this, right? No.)
�ٴDz�’t waste your editor’s time on the easy stuff. Think of it this way: your editor has only so much time, energy and creativity to devote to your book. The better their starting point, the better the outcome. If they’re spending their time fixing basic problems, they’ll have less to devote to the tricky stuff. And they’ll enjoy it less, which may mean they’re less engaged. So��
�ٴDz�’t submit the first draft. You know that, surely. Put it aside, come back, do at least one re-write before showing it to anyone else and��
Get feedback before you submit. Editors may tell you not to do this: I suggest you ignore them. You should have a few trusted readers to look at least at your initial manuscript. My rule is that I consider all feedback and if more than one reader identifies the same problem, I consider it very very seriously. If you have trouble with spelling or grammar or are just sloppy (some people just can’t see that missing word) get someone who’s good at it to check it.
Read it aloud. All the way through. To someone (to stop you cheating). I do this before I submit for the line edit—at which point I want it to be as near��to��perfect as it can be, in keeping with having my editor start from a good base as they look for my awkward phrasings, repeated words, etc.
Focus on the broad problems identified by the editors, not their specifics or the suggested solution. Neil Gaiman nailed it: Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
Get over yourself. Re-read Point 9. There probably is a problem. There’s no point getting all righteous about how badly the editor has expressed it or how stupid their solution is. No one’s listening, except your long-suffering partner. There’s a problem. Get to work fixing it.

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One of the enduring debates amongst writers, and one of the most common questions I’m asked about the writing process is: Plotter or pantser (writing by the seat of ones pants).��Do we / should we plan our work or make it up as we go along?

I’m a plotter (I prefer planner) and I wrote this short article for The Victorian Writer in ��Nov 2014 in the lead-up to a presentation with Paddy O’Reilly, who is a (successful) pantser. It’s reproduced here with the permission of Writers Victoria, and slightly revised. Of course. So��

WHY I’M A PLOTTER

“I start at the first sentence of the novel and finish at the end�� There is only one draft and when it’s done it’s done.�� You could not ask for a more concise—and extreme—characterisation��of a ��‘pantser��, though in the lecture from which this quote is taken, Zadie Smith uses the term micro manager. And she makes it clear that there is no preliminary planning stage for her��start means start.

I am not going to suggest that Ms Smith should change her ways, and if you’ve written four critically acclaimed novels and won the Orange Prize, you should probably also ignore my advice. If you regard plot as the enemy of literary writing, you should similarly look away. But if you are starting out; if you have written 30,000 words and lost your way; if you are struggling with a ‘saggy middle��; or if you think ‘good storyteller�� is a compliment rather than faint praise, read on.

I was always going to be a plotter—or, if I can choose my own word—a planner. My original career was in information systems. We were taught to work ‘top down��, to create an outline before we worked on the detail. We weren’t allowed to work on the detail before the structure had been reviewed. Before you blanch at my comparing computer programming with the art of the novel, reflect on the fact that most professions—and most designers—work in this way. Architects begin with a sketch plan; painters frequently begin with a drawing.

I studied design and creativity theory for my PhD and learned about behaviours that are observed across a variety of creative disciplines. Planning is ubiquitous, but so is working up and down—revising the plan as working on the details prompts changes to the framework.

Then I studied screenwriting. Screenwriters are also storytellers, but there is a focus on structure—some would say formula. Call it what you will, the screenwriter works with a hierarchy that divides a story into acts, then sequences, then scenes. The director will add a further layer of shots. Every screenwriter is familiar with ‘doing the cards��: writing scenes on index cards or in an equivalent computer product and shuffling them around to create the best sequence.

What hope did I have? I began my first novel with a scene structure from the screenplay that preceded it and have worked that way ever since. Here are three reasons why I’ve kept up the practice.

��I can experiment with the plot without throwing away reams of deathless prose. In particular I can play with the sequence. One of the most common problems with plots is that saggy middle or what screenwriters call the hole in the second act. A common reason is lack of escalation of stakes and action, and often a simple shuffling of the cards can allow Hercules to tackle the most difficult labour last rather than first.
The first draft goes easily. I’ll say it again. The first draft goes easily. I know where the story’s going, I know what the scene I’m writing is supposed to achieve, I know my characters, and I know the context. I can concentrate on writing well. If great writing is about great sentences, then I’ve made it as easy as possible for myself to produce them. There’s no writers�� block at this time. Worst case: I can lower my standards, just getting it done, and come back later. (It’s okay for me to come back later!) Or, I can skip ahead to an easier scene. Any real block has happened earlier, in the planning stage and��
�� I can get help in the planning / plotting stage. Screenwriters do this all the time: ‘writer’s room�� means something more to them than ‘special place to write.�� The acclaimed plot for Breaking Bad��and just about any other TV serial drama you care to name��was the result of collaboration; of creative people working together. I don’t think the actual writing of the draft should be collaborative, but the planner has the option of separating that from the plotting.

Let’s return to Zadie Smith. In her lecture, she also says that, “Worrying over the first twenty pages is a way of working on the whole novel, a way of finding its structure, its plot, its characters.�� Did she say ‘plot��? She calls this stage obsessive perspective disorder; Maria Popova, commenting on the lecture in her Brainpickings blog calls it “the psychic malady�� the very state that Kierkegaard believed powers creative work.�� I call it planning.

Zadie Smith’s lecture is included in Changing my Mind �� Occasional Essays (Public Library). If you’d like to read more about plotting, I’d suggest a screenwriting book: for example, Syd Field’s classic Screenplay or Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

I thought I’d celebrate the second anniversary of my last blog post with another on the same topic �� viz creative writing courses.

A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to convince a friend of the value of these, and not making much progress. After what was, in retrospect, a painfully long process, we discovered that our disagreement came down to a fundamental difference: he assumed that creativity could not be taught. Thus, a writing course might impart grammar, principles of structure, advice on point of view and tense, but the magic �� and that was his word �� had to be there from the start. Innate.

I suspect the reason it took so long for us to get to the assumption was that it was well buried: never really recognised, articulated or tested. And if we do test it, it falls over pretty quickly.

Let’s start by recognising that creativity is routine and everyday, as everyday as talking. Every time we speak, unless we’re following a script, we’re being creative. We’re making it up. Every time we write a sentence, same thing. Sure, we can be more or less creative: not every sentence is going to be deathless prose, but we are making something that wasn’t there before, something original. So teaching creativity is not about jumping from non-creative to creative, but about helping people get better at it.

Let’s turn it around. I used to write computer programs and build databases, and that involved coming up with designs and solving problems �� classic creative activities. I started off not being very good at it, and progressively got better. I suspect most of us can relate to that: doing something creative and getting better at it: it’s called learning. Teaching is nothing if not about facilitating the learning process: offering techniques, practice, feedback.

That said, the creative process was probably the most poorly taught aspect of both my writing and technology studies. I suspect many of my teachers shared my friend’s implicit belief that it was either unteachable and / or magic. Strange, because there’s a substantial body of research on creativity and design theory. Seems it doesn’t cross over into the applied disciplines where it’s needed.

Let me be a bit more practical. Here are five dos and don’ts in teaching creativity �� and not just for writers.

Do recognise the creative process as something that can be managed and improved. Teach some models and principles. I studied general design theory and found it remarkably useful in story design and review (I did a Tedx talk about it �� it’s at )
�ٴDz�’t assume your own experience is universally applicable. This is probably the greatest failing of teachers and indeed the famous authors who publish advice on the subject. Rather than teach what works for you, encourage students to identify the settings and mind-sets in which they solve problems or generate new ideas and encourage them to replicate them. (Drug and alcohol warning here). ����
Do force students to expand their tool-set and to get practice with the new tools. Make them write in different tenses and persons, program in different paradigms. Problem solving is easier when you have a variety of options and models to draw on.
Do teach the value of incubation, recognised as one of the central components of the creative process. Get students into the habit of putting work aside and coming back to it. Perhaps make them resubmit an early project for a second assessment.
�ٴDz�’t treat Edward de Bono as the only authority on creativity. His lateral thinking techniques are useful tools to have in the box, but they represent only a tiny populist part of a rich field.

The subtitle of this post is “do they help?�� rather than “do they work?��. The latter subtitle suggests a process that will, by itself, reliably churn out successful creative writers. I haven’t seen one, and I’m not going to argue that they exist or are possible. But, as a consumer of creative writing education over the past six years, I’m going to argue that it can help immensely.

The topic is timely in Australia, because the new fee regimes for TAFE education mean that enrolling in a course is likely to cost a lot more than it once did, especially for mid-life changers like me who already have qualifications. What do you get for your money?��

Well, if you are one of those mid-life changers, or indeed anyone with skills in a job or hobby, ask yourself: what does it take for someone new to my area to become proficient? I suggest that the answer is going to include instruction, practice and feedback. And these in turn require discipline �� to study, to put in the hard yards and to accept criticism.

A good creative writing course will give you all of these. There are other ways to get them, of course. You can read, practice alone or in a group, find a mentor, submit work for publication and take note of the feedback.The creative writing course is just one means to that end. But for many of us, it’s the most convenient,and the assessment system imposes a discipline. Sure, it’d be nice not to need the discipline to be impose externally, but most of us do.

On the downside, it’s back to school, with its fixed hours, rules for interaction, public criticism and those assessments. For some of us that’s going to be a turn-off. Many men, in particular, of my age, had experiences at school that they may not want to revisit. Personally, I didn’t enjoy most of my schooling, but my recent studies have felt like a second chance.

Do I need to say that enrolling in a course and earning the qualification won’t guarantee publication or production? Writing fiction is a tough game �� think tennis, golf and acting. We don’t expect everyone who studies these disciplines to achieve their dreams, or even making a living from them. And that’s when we start talking about talent, previous experience, and the amount of work you’re prepared to do. IN my observation, the last of these is one least often blamed for failure but the most common reason. You can pass a course with WAY less than the 10,000 hours experience widely quoted as the benchmark for proficiency in a field. I’m not criticizing here �� many of us struggle to find time for our writing in a life that includes family, friends, leisure �� and a full-time job.

But enrolling in a course is a start��

At a personal level, my Professional Screenwriting and Professional Writing and Editing studies at RMIT in Melbourne have connected me with like-minded people who have become valued collaborators and good friends, and with the production and publishing industries. They’ve made me do things I wouldn’t have done if I’d designed my own learning program �� and that stretching has been to my benefit. And my fellow students have given me examples of what to do and what not to.

Recently I’ve had some success with my novel, The Rosie Project and the associated screenplay. But if I had not, I would still have regarded my investment in creative writing as one of the best I’ve made.

Commenting on a recent hard-fought byelection, The Age economics writer Tim Colebatch made a plea for some cooperation, observing , “in reality, most of us agree on most things.”��

It’s a commonplace: that the things that unite us are stronger than the things that divide us. (Stay with me, I’m going to get practical shortly, but I want to tell a story first).

Four years ago, I facilitated the “Rural Industries and Communities�� strand at the Australia 2020 Summit �� one hundred leaders, activists and prominent “thinkers�� in an area where there is substantial potential for conflict around development, conservation, the role of government, etc. Twenty working groups each presented one or two ideas to the plenary session, and, rather than invite discussion, I asked each participant to rate the idea on a scale of 1-5 (strongly disagree through strongly agree). At the end of the day, we analyzed the responses. As I recall, not one idea had more than 10 people disagreeing or strongly disagreeing �� i.e. at least 90 of the 100 participants agreed or were at least neutral. ��In most cases the support was higher.

BUT�� the next morning, the session co-chair, former Nationals leader and Deputy PM Tim Fischer, invited discussion on the ideas in a “town hall meeting�� format. There was passionate debate, and the distinct impression was that each of the topics was highly controversial and subject to substantial disagreement. It teased out the issues and problems all right, but you’d never have guessed the broad level of support.

It’s the nature of politics, the media and the legal system to emphasize disagreements. And in writing: as Syd Field says, without conflict there is no drama; without drama there is no story��

Which brings me to being practical. In all aspects of my work, I encounter disagreements. In facilitation, a disagreement is often the reason for the workshop or meeting. In my advanced consulting skills classes, most case studies brought by participants focus on a disagreement. Right now, I’m watching the (extended) correspondence between two data modeling experts on choice of conventions. And when my editor sends me “suggestions�� she’s saying, implicitly, “I disagree with the way you’ve done this.��

Great. Debate teases out the issues. But most of us seem to be better at fueling disagreement than resolving it. There comes a point where we need to move forward and we are not so good at this. The debate goes on “beyond the tag��, progress is stymied, relationships are damaged, and the will to cooperate on implementation is sapped.

My advice is pretty basic and hardly original: Constantly remind yourselves of the things you agree on. Play them back. Write them down. Recognize that you will be working together to do these things going forward if you can get over the things you disagree on.

Yes, it’s simple, but not as simplistic as what one of my screenwriting teachers used to call, inelegantly, the ‘shit sandwich��: Say something positive, deliver the tough message, say something positive again. What I’m proposing is not about platitudes or formulas �� it’s about genuinely recognizing the common ground. If I believe my editor genuinely loves the story and the main character, then I’ll be receptive to her suggestions as to how to make them stronger on the page. But if the suggestions come without the common starting point, then I’ll just see them as an attempt to impose her own vision.

Basic stuff? Maybe. But I make a living out of coming into situations where it hasn’t been done. Feel free to call it basic if you do it all the time. Otherwise it’s time to get the basics in place.

And, in contrast to the usual warning �� DO try this at home.