Writing Advice

A couple of weeks ago I was out at a spoken word event in the Southside and a young man asked me for writing advice. Woah! That’s the first time anyone’s ever asked me that, I thought. That’s what comes of telling people your novel is getting published.

Before you get the wrong idea, I should add that this wasn’t some stranger I was buttonholing. He was a student I teach in one of my ESOL classes at college this year. His English is exceptionally good and though I’d love to say it’s thanks to my teaching, that would be blatantly untrue. Like the main character, Han, in my novel, he’s one of those lucky people, blessed with an extraordinary ear and aptitude for language. The pronunciation, the grammar, he just gets it. And he gets how to learn: every new word he hears or reads goes straight into his vocabulary notebook.

So language isn’t going to stop him writing. His English is only going to get better, with or without my help. After all, Jospeh Conrad only picked up English as a third language when his work as a merchant seaman washed him up in London, and he didn’t exactly do badly.

But what this young man was asking me wasn’t about language. It was about how to become a writer. That magical formula for literary success! From a guy whose first novel isn’t even out yet!

In teaching, I always think there isn’t one perfect formula. Everything depends on who you’re trying to help. I thought about what I knew of this young man. Apart from his linguistic skills and endearing confidence, I knew that he had fled a war-torn country. I also knew that he had worked mining gold somewhere in North Africa, and that he now lived here, in Glasgow. I didn’t know the exact details of his journey but probably he crossed the Mediterranean on a rundown boat packed to the gunwales with other desperate migrants, risking his life for a dream of Europe.

At his age, the one thing I thought I needed so that I could write better was life experience. Ok, in his case, probably not necessary.

He was looking at me expectantly, waiting for some nugget of wisdom to fall from my mouth.

Eventually, I found something:

‘You have to know what it is you want to say,’ I declared.

Which at least is marginally more original than: ‘Write what you know’.

And I still stand by it.