At some stage all post- graduate students have to write up their thesis or dissertation. Paul Magrs talks about writing and creativity for postgraduates.
Jeremy Hoad: Is all writing “creative writing”?
Paul Magrs: School trains you out of thinking of writing as a creative act and the recognition that whatever you’re doing involves imagination and creativity. As people progress through education they neglect their own language. But high degrees of proficiency are needed in language because it is the medium and raw material of ideas. It’s not a transparent medium. You have to be in control of it to manipulate it.
People in higher and further education can be scared of language and hide behind jargon and received wisdom. The temptation is to make writing fancy for the sake of it. Academics are trained to synthesise a variety of sources, but they don’t dig behind them to see what the language is doing. Too often people overcompensate and make things opaque in order to make themselves look bright. A lot of academic writing is fakery. But this sort of opacity in language is a hollow performance.
JH: If language and writing are the core tools of communication, how is “academic” writing different from “creative” writing?
PM: Academic writing has an automatic recourse to received wisdom because of its impartiality. Ascribing ideas to other textual sources by using phrases such as “it is understood” and by using the third person dissociates the author from the ideas. This often makes academic writing very passive and curative. It takes no responsibility for actively making new discoveries. Too often there is a culture of tinkering. One of the worst experiences I had was in a research seminar group where the leader said, “don’t think you’re setting out to write something to change the world”. I thought that was awful. If you’re going to do a PhD you might as well make it different to anything that has been done before. It should not be a stylish compendium of reshuffled quotations. It should be something extraordinary.
JH: Should all academic texts have an academic style?
PM: There is no such thing as an academic style — as soon as you use language it is inflected with all kinds of discourses. There is no received pronunciation for academic discourse, nor should there be. Culturally we’ve exploded the idea of the canon and received pronunciation in academia, so why should there be a hankering for bland academic discourse — why shouldn’t it be rich, varied and idiosyncratic? We’re talking about individual thinkers. Why should their language be fettered?
JH: Should all academic writing tell a story, regardless of discipline?
PM: Whether in the arts or the sciences, writing is not really different. In the sciences people have to write things up and tell the story of their research. This is still a creative act. It has to be vivid, involving, comprehensible and convincing. Scientists are not working in the medium they’re studying so maybe that is different, but there’s still a story to tell and it’s got to be readable.
JH: As a relatively new subject, is creative writing marginalised in academia?
PM: Not in my experience. It has had to clear a space for itself, but it has gained a lot of respect. It has brought a healthy influx of freelance writers and thinkers into the academy. These people are used to creating their own intellectual and creative projects, being resourceful and independent as writers. That is a good influence in higher education.
JH: Creative writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA) has an international reputation for excellence. What has it contributed in the past?
PM: UEA has had over 30 years of idiosyncratic writers who have gone on to work in media of all types, people who were given responsibility for their own education and created something unique. They have contributed to culture in many different ways.
JH: Where do you see it going now?
PM: Writing at UEA is a broader school now. The undergraduate programme is much bigger. There are more PhD students and the MA in creative writing was recently doubled in size. The MA in creative writing is for students who are seriously committed to writing and are practising or prospective authors. It does not claim to teach students to be professional writers, although excellent contacts are maintained with agents, publishers and the professional theatre. There are separate workshops and support for all levels and all contribute to a culture of writing in the school. This overlaps with English literature and all other areas in the department: theory, drama, documentary and film. We are interested now in writers who read as engaged intellectuals at all levels.
JH: There has been a dramatic increase in postgraduate courses over the last decade, but does postgraduate funding discriminate against talent?
PM: This is not my understanding. Difficulties in funding for the creative arts subjects have always existed but a lot of care goes into the admissions process on all sides. I do wish more funding was available. At UEA we are lucky to have some brilliant bursaries and scholarships, but these opportunities are not available everywhere.
JH: Do you see postgraduate courses becoming more vocational as higher education adapts to a mass system? Would you do postgraduate study now?
PM: Creative writing is vocational in the sense that we’re training people to be resourceful, creative intellectuals who are at home with language and rhetoric. This is the primary transferable skill.
I would still do postgraduate study now. I wanted to blend theory with fiction. I always had the two parts to my life — teaching and producing writing.
JH: Lastly, do you have any tips for thesis writing?
PM: I think it is important to remember that a thesis is only your first book. Don’t get bogged down. Take the aerial view of it, but don’t try to carry the whole thing in your head all the time. Map it out and structure it like a story you are telling, taking it piece by piece. It has got to build. But don’t let it be like one of those serial collectable magazines like Mysteries of the Unexplained or The World at War, where issue two comes free with issue one. At least get to the end of volume one first and then start thinking about volume two. —