Hello!

I know you might not believe me if I tell you how friendly the B-Writing crowd are, because I’m biased. So here’s a lovely testimonial from a writer who’s been coming to my classes for a while now:

It's great to meet other people who are interested in writing and facing similar challenges to me. The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly. Everyone is encouraging and I've found it so helpful for getting out of a rut with my writing.

I’d love you to join us. And if you’ve already booked, I’m sorry - I haven’t yet worked out how to send different newsletters to different people. If you’re so inclined, skip down to where I wonder whether you might want to give up on the idea of being a writer, which isn’t as counterintuitive as you might sound.

It’s easier to take writing seriously and to approach it with rigour and discipline when it doesn’t feel like a burden or a curse. I want people to leave my classes filled with a sense of possibility and hope, as well as a raft of practical things they can DO that aren’t dependent on whether you feel sufficiently writerish.

This is why I’m so happy that people who come to B-Writing say things like,

“I have found joy in writing in these workshops”

and

“I travel over 200 miles round trip each week to attend. It is the best thing I’ve done in a long time.”

Open for booking now!

Writing Workshop — Tuesdays 6.30–8.30pm from 5th May at the Birmingham and Midland Institute. The classes are low-pressure & super-supportive, but we’re also serious about learning the craft. The fee-free way to book is by contacting me at bwriting@icloud.com. It’s £270 for 10 classes or £180 for 6 (and top-up if you want to come to more for £30 a session.) Or you can book with Eventbrite here.

The Writing Well — Thursdays 6.30-8.30pm at The Core, Solihull (check link for full dates). This is a pay-as-you-go class; come to as few or as many as you like. Ways (back) in - to writing. Low-risk, high-reward. Book direct with The Core.

As ever, if you have any questions about the workshops and whether they’re right for you, or whether mentoring might be a better fit, please get in touch at bwriting@icloud.com and we can chat. (Don’t reply to this newsletter, please, as these emails don’t always reach me.)

Giving up on being a writer. Or not.

Did I tell you that I once gave up on writing, and very publicly? (Well, if ‘publicly’ means ‘to about seven lovely readers.’) I wrote a long piece about the death of my friend and how I was finally giving up many things, including the beautiful Ardalanish tweed she’d bequeathed me when I realised that I’d never be able to use it. Of course, I didn’t actually stop writing, but saying ‘I’m no longer a writer’ allowed me to abandon the idea of myself as a writer.

Sometimes turning an activity into an identity is useful; I am a gardener, a baker, a dancer. It gives permission and lets you claim a descriptor that you might have previously thought you weren’t entitled to.

If that’s you, then claim it. You ARE a writer. If calling yourself a writer feels liberating and energising, do it. If it’s an act of faith, that’s great, too. If it means that you can write, then YES. Print it out and stick in on a name tag. Stencil it onto the back of your chair. Embroider it onto a cushion. Anything that helps you claim your right to make things with words.

But if Being a Writer becomes oppressive, let it go.

The idea of writer-me had accumulated a lot of emotional static about being a failure and a f*ck-up. I’d written a story. A very long story. With Black Country dialect. I was phenomenally fortunate - it got published and people said really complimentary things about it (except those who didn’t, and that’s fine). I was now - cue trumpets - a writer, sharing a publisher with Iris Murdoch and Virginia Woolf and Mark Twain. It still thrills me and I don’t take any bit of being published for granted. And yet, once the publishing fizzle had subsided, writing became this incredibly hard, joyless thing. I over-researched. I felt I needed my writing to Say Something. My dad died and my family life got relentlessly challenging, and my endlessly unfinished difficult second novel felt strained. Early drafts often like it candlelit, but I felt like I was writing under neon. (I probably needed to go for a walk under trees and have a hot bath and get a hug from a really good friend, rather than sit in a library with my head in my hands, trying to squeeze a novel out through my fingers.) I loved watching students becoming writers in my university teaching job, but I’d lost that sense of joy and possibility in my own writing. I don’t mean that the content of writing should be all joy and possibility, but when your drafts sounds like your nan’s telephone voice then the chances are you’re not at your most relaxed, and no one can really create when they’re tense.

So when I wrote (!) ‘I’m no longer a writer,’ I was letting go of all that effort-in-the-wrong-place. I let go of these exhausted, bloodless writing projects I’d invested years in. Over time, this has made space for other characters, stories, images, odd lines, to drift in on the tide, and I’m definitely writing. I like this ‘tidal’ metaphor more than a linear ‘growth’ or ‘journey’: in/out; contract; relax; let it go/let it come. The tide, the heart, the breath: this is the way of things. Things fall apart. Things come together.

Sometimes writing is a way of untangling, a way of making sense. Sometimes it’s being dragged along, nose-first, by the scent of a story - where’s this going? Sometimes it’s a slower unfolding, or a form of applied attention. Or just mucking about with a couple of characters and a scenario and seeing where it takes you, whether you call yourself a writer, or not.

You’re welcome at B-Writing,

Love, Anna