The right place

OCA’s new creative writing tutor, the novelist and dramatist Beatrice Colin, argues that university is not the best place to learn to be a writer, and makes the case for creative writing to be taught alongside painting and photography. But does she follow the advice she gives to students when working on her own fiction?
Beatrice Colin is the latest author to join the ranks of OCA’s creative writing tutors. She has published four novels and six plays, and adapted three plays for BBC Radio 4. Her 2008 novel, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite, was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club in 2009.
Beatrice has worked as an English literature tutor at Strathclyde University and is a mentor for the Scottish Book Trust. Based on her experience teaching a creative writing evening class in her home city of Glasgow, where all her students are in their 20s or 50s, she was surprised to find that all four of her first OCA students are in their 30s – younger than she had expected.
These different experiences of teaching give substance to her belief that the teaching of creative writing is best done in the setting of an arts school, rather than within the walls of academe, which she sees as an unsuitable environment for aspiring writers. ‘University is all about goals and grading, which are antithetical to learning the craft of writing,’ she says. ‘How does it help us to have our creativity halted at a pre-ordained point so we can be assessed and examined? The fluidity of OCA’s way of studying mean that students can gain an academic qualification if they choose to, but without the time pressures imposed by the conventional higher education system. ’
Beatrice first heard about the Open College of the Arts through a friend, who had done an OCA creative writing course and found it an excellent way into writing and of discovering what he was capable of doing. She was particularly struck by his comment that with open learning, you don’t have to expose yourself in front of others.
‘Creative writing is essentially a solitary art, far more so than, say, painting or photography,’ says Beatrice. ‘It’s down to you to come up with solutions to the problems you create, so having a neutral, objective tutor giving you comments on your work, as all OCA students do, is a real benefit. A partner or friend isn’t neutral, as they are thinking about how their comments might make you feel. An agent or editor is thinking about what will sell. But a tutor, and one who knows at first-hand the daily struggles of a writer, can give informed feedback in a way that on-one else can.’
Not everyone will agree with Beatrice’s views on why writers do write and should write. According to her, writing first and foremost because you want to be published is mistaken. A writer’s main motivation should be to create and explore. Getting your work published in secondary.
But is this a precept Beatrice follows in her own work? ‘When I start writing, I don’t have a clear idea of where I am going’, explains Beatrice. ‘My ideas take shape as part of the creative process. To have planned and plotted everything in minute detail first would take away the satisfaction of creating a world that didn’t exist before.’