First Day Back At School

January 7th 2008

I’ve been planning to write a novel for years.   The plot is there in my head.  I’ve lived with my characters, spoken about them, even dreamed about them.  But I’ve never put them down on paper.  Which is why I’ve opted to go back ‘to school’, to learn how to write a ‘real’ book – and it’s quite a challenge.
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The last time I willingly sat behind a desk was in the early 1960’s as an 18 year-old student at what was then The Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Central London) where I had been accepted into the School of Journalism.   That was years before ‘media studies’ was acknowledged as worthy of a three year University degree.   My year-long crammer diploma course was recognised then by The National Council for the Training of Journalists as an option to a three year apprenticeship on a local paper. 

We sat behind conventional desks in rows, with a blackboard in front, learning what constituted news, how to write a feature, how to sub-edit (from Times Sub-Editor Mr Pilpel I recall).  We had to learn touch typing and Pitman’s shorthand (a skill that I’ve blessed with all my working life), and how to contact anyone, from the Queen’s Office or a movie star in Hollywood, to people who are helped by homeless charities.  I learned how to dress appropriately - having turned up in work in trademark student Goth black, only to find myself sent to the Dorchester Hotel to interview US star James Garner - and in pouring rain with no umbrella!  We produced a newspaper, Polygen, from start to printed finish, learning the old ‘hot metal’ type printing at the London School of Printing.  In 12-months of intensive work, I learned a career I have practised and loved for over four decades.  Some of my fellow students became famous journalists, while others never used their training. 

But writing fiction and writing facts are very different skills.   Which is how I have come to enrol at the Mary Ward Centre for Adult Education in London.  My greatest fear is that I will be unable to retain knowledge any more, or practise what I will learn successfully.   I’m at an age when I go upstairs and forget what I’ve gone up for!   Yet, in my quest to put the book in my head down on paper, I’ve signed up for two courses that I hope will anable me to write a blockbuster of J K Rowling proportions.

Ok, so maybe that’s a little ambitious!  But, like thousands of others, I long to write a work of fiction that will be published.  Although in the past I’ve written a biography and self-help books which have been published, a novel is something else entirely.  I didn’t sleep last night, for fear that everyone in the Monday afternoon ‘Novel Approach’ class will be brighter than me, more experienced than me, have better ideas than me and be more capable than me.   I’m sure they will all have better memories.  Now it’s come to making a commitment, I’m not actually sure that I have it in me to write a ‘proper’ book. 

Arriving at Mary Ward, a white painted Georgian building at the far end of Queens Square from Russell Square tube on a wet, dull winter day, I was surprised to see a blackboard advertising Café facilities on the steps.  Inside the wood panelled reception area, ‘students’ ranging in age from early 20’s to Senior Citizens were asking patient receptionists about registration.  Having ascertained I needed Room 11 on the 1st floor, I made for the (all vegetarian) café for a coffee.

People in here, my fellow students I presume, are taking courses in everything from over-60’s Computer Science and Photoshop to Italian for Beginners. 

Upstairs, in a vast, high ceilinged lemon-painted front room, we sit in a semi-circle on chairs with flimsy ‘stick on’ desks to lean on.  As a left-hander, I faced my first problem because the ‘rests’ are permanently fixed to the right hand side of the chair.  There are 12 of us.  All women.   Roger, our tutor, says that 17 have signed up, including a sole male, but five, including the man, have failed to show.

Register taken, formalities over, our first exercise is talking ‘round the room’ to introduce ourselves and our embryo books - although most people have actually written most of their books, it seems.  I’m one of only two who is no further than the synopsis stage.  I also seem to be the only person in the room who hasn’t taken a creative writing course in the past, or even attended a workshop.  

There are a couple of other journalists, a pair of academics collaborating on a novel.  One woman is writing a story about twins.  It sounds a really great read but she needs help defining her characters.   Another, who writes operettas says she keeps writing a book that is all fantasy, magic and sex but she repeatedly tears it up because it’s too raunchy and she doesn’t want her son to read it!

A former probation officer has written several novels, but says she’s destroyed them because she doesn’t think they’re up to much!  There’s a former singer whose book is based around Music Halls in the 1950’s, and another lady is writing books for teenage boys.  There’s a mid-40-ish blonde lady with dreadlocks who has admitted to dyslexia and bi-polar disease (otherwise known as manic depression) who says she has written a book based on her rastifarian experiences which she has illustrated, and which also contains poetry as she’s a poet, too.  There’s one lady transcribing a play she wrote for teenage boys and had them perform a decade ago, into prose.  I suspect she’s a former teacher.  And lastly there’s a young mum who has discovered the banal world of other young mums who meet in coffee bars and wants to write about them – but absolutely not “chick lit”.

When it’s my turn to explain my idea, I freeze inside.  I can’t seem to get it all out, although once I start talking, I can’t seem to stop.  Roger is very complimentary about it.  He says I’ve put it over well and  it sounds as if it contains lots of thrills.  We all have to offer a single word to describe what we want out of this course.  My word is ‘imagination’.  As a journalist, I’m ‘fact bound’.  After spending so many years ensuring the facts are right, it’s quite difficult to think of throwing them to the winds and letting whatever I want to happen, happen. 

Roger explains that our work will be assessed as the course progresses and we will all be expected to read a 15 minute extract from our books out loud to the class.  I opt for for January 28th  which gives me two weeks to write 2,500 words of the first chapter.  So, now I need to go home and knuckle under.

Andrea Kon is writing a weekly blog about her experience of going back to school.  Check next week for her next installment.

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