 This is the third lecture of the second module. It revolves around issues related to teaching of writing. This particular lecture is divided into three parts. Part one deals with writers on teaching of creative writing. Part two deals with teachers come writers on creative writing in the academy. Part three deals with teaching of creative writing in India a nascent field. Lectures eight and nine deal with contemporary Indian context and how we locate this discourse within our own context. Now, so far as writing versus creative writing are concerned as the title indicates we locate certain amount of tension or tussle between these two terms. Writers very often do not label their writing as creative because they assume that their writing implies original contribution. Very often then it has been pointed out that the term creative writing is associated with academic programs and institutionalization of writing as a creative endeavor. Now you may wonder as to why there should be a tussle between these two modes of writing. But very obviously just as we indicated in our last lecture that there is a certain amount of tussle or sheism between literary studies as an academic sphere versus creative writing within the academy. Similarly, within creative writing also I think there is a kind of separation between writers who teach temporarily with their strong focus on their own independence as writers and teachers of creative writing who have come to teaching through the writing process. But at the same time their role as teachers is much more dominant. So, for your clarification and for our understanding of these patterns we have actually sort of started looking at the difference between these two lobbies if we can use that word. Although I do want to point out that these are tussles which have not played out in the same way in our own country, in our own historical location. Therefore, we are looking at western experience although many of the writers are not necessarily part of the western experience but many of the non-western writers also have been teaching in the western academy. So, basically writers whose independence is upheld by them for their writing process but they at the same time from time to time do interact with the teaching establishment with the academy. We sort of separate them from teachers and teaching manuals, people who have written teaching manuals for creative writing because there is a lot of debate you will see gradually. The most recent writer who has in a very oblique manner talked about creative writing programs is Orhan Pamuk the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and if you have not started reading his very enchanting books then maybe this information will help you. He has been translated from Turkish into English and many other languages. The book that he actually published recently is about the novel it is called The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist. This particular phrase and contrast he has picked up from Schiller's essay titled on Naive and Sentimental Poetry and then he has based distinction with reference to his elaboration of the form of novel again mainly through his own experience of being a writer for the last 30-35 years. So in this particular book he has actually said that the naive roughly is a sort of novelist as a person who is not really concerned by the artificial aspects of writing and the sentimental novelist is fascinated by the artificiality of the text and its failure to attain reality and in that sense he feels that a novelist is both naive and sentimental at the same time. Now, the reason all this is mentioned is because his particular statement as I said it is an oblique statement but it is placed within this discussion of what the novel is all about and within that frame of reference he points out that E. M. Foster's aspects of the novel which has been dropped from the English literature syllabus and and these are his words exiled to creative writing programs where writing is treated as a craft and not as a spiritual and philosophical act. So there are comments here about both the English literature syllabus that is the literary academy and at the same time about creative writing programs within the academy. Now his approach is rather interesting because I think apart from Foster he goes on to talk about Lukash another very, very important critic and he refers to his pre-Marxist theorization but according to him both these critics they provide a sense of the evolution of the novel and they also point out the profound influence of this form on humanity. So he feels these are very, very weighty studies and therefore these should be brought back into the framework of both literary studies and they should also be used for creative writing with programs for better understanding of the historical and philosophical impulses behind the novel form. So Pamuk's position seems to suggest that there is for both the critics and the creative writing teachers and writers there is a need to confront the highly problematic interplay between life, art and craft but certainly his comment it does give a sense that according to his understanding most of the creative writing programs seem to suffer from an excessive emphasis on the craft and not in terms of this larger framework of thinking that gives it the kind of magnitude that it has gained. The other writer that we have picked up is Hanif Qureshi a UK based writer who is a playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, novelist, short story writer and his remark again it is very interesting because he you know it sort of shows that although he was part of creative writing programs but there is this great ambivalence regarding teaching of creative writing because there is also this question of how do you grade it that is one thing and the other point of view that he has expressed very strongly is related to the fact that creative writing courses can end up setting up false expectations among students that a literary career will inevitably follow after you do these creative writing courses and the fantasy is that all the students will become successful writers and no one will disabuse them of that very strong words but I think you know since we are in the process of reviewing different positions finally to have our own sort of point of view our own sturdy way of gaining insights from others and retaining our sense of purpose therefore it is important to see that there is genuine reason as to why there is always this question about how teach you know creative writing can be taught. So then I think in order to balance out this picture it is important for us to now look at what teachers come writers of creative writing have to say about teaching of writing and I think the best way would be to sort of start with writers of teaching manuals who have established their position in a way which cannot be challenged very much because constantly these are referred to whenever we talk about creative writing processes and many other manuals depend on these ideas. So I think the first manual that we will look at and the second one too you will notice that both of these are fiction centric. So let me just explain why we chose them we chose them as I said because they are constantly referred to and so they have again the solid position within this field the fact that they are fiction centric also shows the dominant pattern of western practice. So first we are concerned I think what we can do is to recognize that fiction is an assimilative form that is it borrows different kinds of forms and has great resilience internally and therefore statements and observations that are made regarding fiction and how to develop one's abilities to write better fiction have general ramifications for writing. The point that is noteworthy also is that writers themselves when you look at their diaries or their own writings on their work you will notice that they do not seem to separate the literary genres in their creative search. This kind of sharp basic commitment to a form does not work out in the way we sometimes seem to suggest that it works out in the writing programs and that is where I have a bit of a problem with this preoccupation with one form over other forms and in fact I feel that drama which is an ancient multidimensional form has be has much to offer to writing programs. When I say that drama is a multidimensional form I am referring to the fact that it has both a dramatic written text and it has in addition a performative text and of course the audience also is large it has it is a whole different process but I think there is much that one can gain from it in a very conscious manner but and not in a very diffused manner. Most of the western manuals seem to ignore this potential. So I think with this preamble what I should do is to really invite Neha who has been associated with this video course as a research assistant to share her views on a particular manual that she has been using and critiquing. The advantage of having Neha is related to the fact that she has already done her masters in literature and also after doing her masters in literature from Delhi University she has been freelancing as a writer for the last two to three years therefore it gives us a very good insight into what a person like her who is hungry for writing has to say about a very important western manual on the writing process. So may I invite Neha to share her views with you and then I will come on board again. Hi, I will be talking about Dorothea Brand's book Becoming a Writer. I came across this book when I read an article in The Guardian by writer Hilary Mantle. She says, read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brand then do what it says including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. So I bought the book, I read it and tried out some of the tasks given. What I present to you today is my understanding of the book and some of the things I learned from it about the writing process. As Mantle says, it is a book that describes the temperament needed for honing the skill of writing fiction and encourages the reader to know his or herself rather than giving specific writing advice on the craft or the techniques of writing fiction. Dorothea Brand was herself a student of writing, a writer, a teacher of writing and a widely respected editor. Under her apprenticeship, in which she read almost every book on the technique of fiction, lived consciously in literary ethos, assimilated various viewpoints regarding writer's self-view, who regarded their calling variously as a trade, a profession and rather sheepishly as an art. She also pursued writing, publishing and teaching activities. She wrote this book, keeping in mind the problems her students faced when doing courses in creative writing classes. She builds a case for flexibility in teaching as the needs of every student may be different and particularly in a creative writing course, students may require individualized attention. Cultivating a writer's temperament Brand's take is that the issue of writer's temperament should be addressed before technical instruction can be of full use to students. The two sides she says to a writer's temperament are the unconscious and the conscious sides, also the artist and the artisan sides. For cultivating the writer's temperament, she recommends that you treat these two sides as part of a dual personality, which when in harmony they play into each other, building on each other's strengths. So your unconscious artist is childlike, playful, sensitive, given to daydreaming and reverie is a source of art and originality, whereas your conscious artisan self is mature, discriminatory, given to practicalities, is intellectual, is an imbiber and developer of craft. When you have this dual personality teaching or training these two sides of yourself in different ways can help learn different aspects of writing without hampering each other's progress. She recommends that for training the first step is to teach yourself not as though you were one person but two. So she says, for training the artist self, you harness the unconscious and you trust the unconscious to deliver. For training the artisan, you develop the intellect through learning techniques of writing fiction. She recommends that for harnessing the unconscious, one can get up early in the morning and before reading a newspaper or talking to anyone at all, write the first thing. After a continuous repetition of this process is applied and this action comes as easily as waking up or breathing that it becomes a basic part of your routine to get up and write first thing in the morning, then you can learn to write by agreement, wherein you decide a time during the day to write. This will harness your unconscious and help you to write more easily and better. She says that after you are able to do this by agreement and you collect a sizable material for studying that your artist self has given your artisan self, you develop your artisan's intellectual abilities by calling upon the artisan to look at your writing as if it were a stranger. You try to find in which form this stranger's natural inclination lies based on the content. After this, you learn solutions to problems grappled by the artist by critical reading of other authors to see how they have dealt with such problems. I have enjoyed the lessons from this book because it is a simple and honest account of Brand's experience of teaching and offers no nonsense advice. Thank you. Thank you, Neha, for reviewing this book. Before I move on to John Gardner and his art of fiction, let me sort of check up if we are on the same page. As you listen to us, it would be really useful to take down notes so that you can also begin to try out some of the ideas and also then check out if there is any question that you need to pose for further understanding. So, now I will shift to a short review of John Gardner's the art of fiction which has actually a subtitle which shows that it is notes on crap for young writers. On the second slide we have given the subtitle, this book is designed to teach the serious beginning writer the art of fiction and Gardner believes that the ability to write well is partly a gift, that is his point of view. But mainly a product of good teaching supported by a deep down love of writing, quite a few ifs and buts there, but in any case let us also move on to how he has sort of organized his book. It is divided into two parts. The first part deals with general theory of fiction and the required craft, part two deals specifically with writing techniques and exercises. True to his teaching commitments, he has emphasized group exercises followed by discussions finally leading to individual work. We plan to explore some of his observations and exercises on genre in particular and the notion of genre and also genre crossing. When we talk about fiction, drama, poetry, essay, these are all literary genres, but also within that there are many other ways of placing material together. So, we would like to see what he has to say about genre and genre crossing and later on we will introduce you to some of his ideas especially because he seems to sort of suggest that genre crossing leads to great deal of innovation. So, let us see what kind of an idea he has developed later on. Some of the basic skills according to him which are necessary for writing are you know given here mastery over due demands of language that is absolutely necessary according to him and we also agree with this because often times even if you are well intentioned but you do not really have grasp of the language, it is very hard to sustain creative writing whether it is English, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu any language that you want to write in you have to have a feel for that language and how it is used in different situations. But especially the standard variety I think it is better to have a complete mastery over it. What it also requires is a sharp grasp of literary forms and I mentioned the notion of genre and that is also another way of stating the same idea. So, sharp grasp of literary forms is very important and according to him and this is his point of view that if you have these elements and then you want to write you really will be able to create what he considered as dream like quality. You will be able to sort of achieve dream like quality of writing which he seems to suggest is the way fiction is created. It is vivid and it is continuous like a dream with its own internal logic. So, that is his point of view but he also adds another point of view which I think is very useful for us and that is related to the fact that there are primary forms of fiction according to him which you really need to understand before you begin to experiment in terms of your own creative writing and these have been isolated by him and I am sort of just pointing out his own categorization, realistic narratives, tales and yarns. So, these he considers as primary forms of fiction and you ought to master these or at least play with these before you begin to find your own bearings in terms of fiction as an art form. So, therefore, the other statement that he makes is with reference to meta-fiction. He says that before you can work with meta-fiction you need to understand how these primary forms work. So, in other words he seems to have a fairly clear graphic vivid picture of how to take the students on to a journey of creative writing, a world in itself according to Atwood whom we will discuss later on. So, it is definitely a sort of book that we think you can look at if you are interested in sustaining your effort in the direction of fiction. The other book that we found very useful is the writer's workbook and if you have been listening to the lectures of the first module carefully, you will immediately recognize reference to this book because we had mentioned this particular resource time and again while emphasizing the significance of reading as a writer or the significance of reading as a very crucial initial exposure to the variety of possibilities that great writers offer. The section on short story also in this manual is extremely interesting and useful. He covers you know for each chapter there are different writers. So, in this case also the person who has written short story section they have dealt with all the elements of the short story like character, dialogue, plot, beginning and ending a story and the significance of notion of point of view and that point of view notion of point of view is extremely important in the way you as a writer connects to your reader. So, this is again you know it is more like a manual meant for step by step exposure and it is meant for really a person who has not been exposed to writing and thinking about writing at all. It is useful and the examples here are also well chosen. The section on writing for stage I personally do not take to although it covers important elements of the form of drama such as the notion of action, dialogue, story, plot, theme, character, speeches, subtext but these are very uneven examples and I think it shows a typical failure of writing manuals that I have come across who actually do not dip into drama sufficiently deeply in order to choose examples that really will provoke this student into thinking of fresh. This is something that we want to circumvent in module 3 but let us see if that is possible for us but in any case we will try our best to make sure that fresh ways of looking at drama and also many of the great plays or many of the non-canonized plays also we are able to place before you because it will make you see the possibilities and also you know the way your imagination can be stretched it will hopefully help you do that. But one particular book which articulates the significance of drama and performance as an art form and is used in creative writing programs is Rob Pope's book on creativity, theory, history and practice. Again a book that we have referred to earlier Rob Pope's book represents the new trend of reviewing both contemporary theory and contemporary creative writing practice in a very interwoven manner and I suppose that is why he is very keen on understanding the notion of play, the nation of performance because these have become very important epistemes very important ideas in contemporary theoretical discussions. But at the level of even initial exposure I think what he has to say makes a lot of sense. He talks about the permeability between the world of drama in the theatre, the representational form and what we also routinely hail as the drama of everyday life which also has its tragic and comic moments. So the key word here is the permeability and the full phrase the permeability between the world of drama and everyday life. So this is something again you can think of and also we will also try and develop this permeability and how it works out, how it creates tension in extrapolating from life and representing certain slice of life in both realistic or non realistic manner in theatre. The second element that he has referred to is the rich ambiguity of the word play and if you again recollect module 1 we have talked about numerous theories about the word play and you know this is a very important word both theoretically and even at the level of just simple practice as such because I think the element of play is very important for young people and also the element of playfulness, play of ideas also is very significant and theoreticians have paid great deal of attention to this. So both at the level of theory, contemporary thought, new episteme, new ideas which also reflect the historical changes around us plus at the level of simple writing manuals where these ideas are teased out and placed before you, I think some of the books have started actually expanding the scope of creative writing concerns. A very interesting book that came out in 2009 regarding the western experience and as you recollect I have you know emphasized the fact that whatever manuals or institutional framework we are talking about we are not talking about our own country, we are talking about countries where creative writing programs have established their presence in a very strong way. So within that frame of reference this book called the program era post for fiction and the rise of creative writing it gives a very interesting point for reflection because actually although McGill's argument is that the rise of creative writing programs has added value to American education but there are also scathing rejections of this point of view. But let me first look at this point of view because when we started with Dawson we talked about the slight ambivalence and sheism that really plagued creative writing programs within the academy because they were rejected by the literary establishment. Now we come to a point where the whole era is called the program era and this is of course within the American framework but it has larger ramifications in terms of ideas and tussles and their content. So he makes the claim that post for fiction is actually understood better if we look at its connection to creative writing programs. In fact it has come out of this whole ethos of creative writing programs and the various ideas that have guided these programs. So he is given a historical breakup. For example his chapters also are worked out around these historical divisions. He points out that from 1890 to 1960 the creative writing mantra was write what you know, show do not tell then from 1960 to 1975 the main idea was related to find your voice and from 1975 to 2008 it was actually related to creative writing at large that is voices from the margins emerging and so one of the sub chapters is titled mass higher education and lower middle class modernism etc. So then this is a fairly intricate trajectory and he has picked up important American writers in order to show that these writing programs have generated a complex and evolving constellation of aesthetic problems rather than occasion or decline in the quality or interest of American writing. Now this is definitely a viewpoint that needs to be understood very carefully but at the same time so far as we are concerned we cannot quite ignore the fact that there also have been scathing reviews and one of the reviews in New York Times for example called this particular book you know in terms of a review title the Ponzi workshop. And by suggesting that Mr. McGill, Professor McGill has looked at the aesthetic aspect of this whole enterprise of doing creative writing within the academy and at the same time retaining vigor that is close to the vigor of what the kind of independence that writers at large wish to maintain and fight for but according to him Professor McGill has completely ignored the economy involved the kind of subsidization of this independence so to say. So there are different kinds of issues both of aesthetics and of economy that emerge while talking about any of the academic programs but certainly we are at a very different stage because of our own unique history and I think where therefore if we begin to incorporate creative writing within our own institutional frameworks we can actually generate our own vital programs without imitating what is out there in the western framework. So therefore now in terms of what exists within our own framework I thought we would have a quick look at one or two ideas here that first of all it is an ascent field in terms of institutionalizations although within existing frameworks we do know of courses we have not done any comprehensive survey but for example courses on creative writing exists in many IITs and some of the universities as options or as electives at undergraduate level. Some other institutions also have operationalized the idea one of these is in the Raghandhi National Open University which provides a diploma course in creative writing for a freelance writers but it also has a fairly diffused outlook because it incorporates different kinds of writing needs within its framework so it seems to me I may be wrong. The other idea the other institutional practice that we picked up from the web or we have not corroborated whether this is being practiced or not is related to the central institute of Indian languages where attempt is made to you know marry creative writing to issues of marginalization. Apart from these institutional efforts there are also you know again freelance classes of media film schools or creative writing workshops for those who are interested in it. This again sort of not a very systematic thing but it is gaining popularity. Our own creativity and creative writing semester long course has been taught by me for a decade and it is focused on foregrounding and understanding creativity unlike the creative writing programs in the west. We are more focused on understanding creativity itself because of our own historical location where creativity has been ignored or the notion of creativity, originality, innovation, the desire for young people to do something fresh on their own and also the paths that are necessary to lead to that sort of end point. So the students therefore are encouraged to bring their individual projects for detailed discussion. The projects may be literary, scientific or from any other creative preoccupation of the student but leading to writing work because we feel that writing is a very very important aspect of learning and if we were to evoke this neurological insight we quoted earlier where some of the cognitive scientists have said that writing like reading changes you neurologically. So I suppose post facto one can add that justification but we do believe that writing is a process that helps you review your ideas deeply. So building on the work done so far this video course tends to move in the direction of creativity and creative writing for self actualization. We are aware of the diversity of schooling patterns and there are even consequences for young minds and therefore more emphasis is given to the process of searching for sources of creativity and generating meaningful new innovative directions and that is why we are talking to you and you are listening to us. Let our dialogue flourish. The rest of the material we have already placed before you but I want to end this session by quoting the words of one of the students at the end of the course who said that creative writing for me is a highly autotelic activity as long as I am comfortably seated and undisturbed by anything save music, writing soon consumes all my attention, time rushes by unnoticed and the process is very fulfilling. Writing for me has never been associated with any extrinsic reward and publication was not even on my mind until I was well into my second novel. I am doing it because the experience is immensely rewarding in itself taking me to a state of mind that is free of mundane vows and all stress, a state of mind that is highly addictive in itself. So, I think we are really not on lost ground and with this I would end this session. Thank you.