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Get Started In Creative Writing: Treachery and other good habits of writers

by Stephen May

The writer Julia Darling called her last published book of poetry Apology for Absence. She did this as an acknowledgement of the disregard writers often can’t help showing towards their family and friends.

At any family event a writer is only half there. This is because writers are also recording, shaping and moulding what’s going on around them – they can often seem ‘away with the fairies’ as my dad might have put it.

And, of course, there are worse treacheries than simple absence. Writers are ruthless. The life of a writer is a seam to be mined and a writer’s family and friends are fair game. They become material. Their habits, their work, their mannerisms, their views and histories are all possible novels, poems and plays. Their stories are your stories.

One of the things that you are doing as a writer is trying to make sense of the world around you. To lead a properly-examined life. And what a writer, like a forensic scientist, uncovers might well be unpalatable for those closest to them.

Martin Amis once wrote that snoops are ‘seekers of pain.’ He should know. Writers are the ultimate snoops. Nothing is off limits.


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Get Started In Creative Writing: Teach Yourself

Get Started In Creative Writing: Teach Yourself
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