I took my teenaged son to an intimate gig with bluegrass singer, Lewis Pugh, last night. It’s our new favourite pastime, to explore the musical scene of our hometown, this steel-strung city. Because, after fourteen years of sitting in his favourite chair and steadfastly refusing to engage in any extra-curricular activities, my son has recently discovered music and now he’s unstoppable. He spends every accumulated penny on instruments from Vinted and, these days, his entrance to each household room is accompanied by the strum of a guitar, the toot of a penny whistle or the jaunty refrain of an accordion. He is a boy obsessed, possessed. He has found his thing and I couldn’t be happier. Because I recognise this feeling. It’s how I feel when I’m writing. A pure, unadulterated joy. And isn’t this all we could wish for our children? That they have something that feeds their souls, something that will carry them through the darkest of times, something that they love. Life is hard. I know this to be true. How much easier it will be if they can record the journey in words, transform their pain into art or accompany themselves with a harmonica.
Like many folk singers, Lewis is inspired by tales of the underdog: of union men, cotton pickers and miners, people who lost their lives to brutal work or brutal bosses, in strikes and standoffs. He sings of their trials, his calloused fingers dancing across the strings, the way my own soft fingers dance across the laptop keys, and the audience is united for a moment by the music. We are lifted on a melody, surging together like the crowd of striking miners he sings about. This is the beauty of art. It brings people together, connecting us across generations and social strata, even across centuries. In one interlude, Lewis tells us that his own ancestors were Welsh coal miners who lived their short lives in the darkness of the pit. ‘People say that the musician’s life is hard,’ he says. ‘But this isn’t hard. All I know is that I’d rather do this than work in the mines.’
His words resonate because I’ve recently weighed into a discussion online about this very subject. A writing coach has shared the words of Thomas Mann, that ‘a writer is one to whom writing comes harder than to anybody else.’ It solicits responses from other writers about their own struggles to put pen to paper, and writing is, again, hailed as an impossible trial, an ordeal that is not for the fainthearted. It conjures images of tortured artists, bleeding themselves dry for ink. These images irk me. I try to hold myself back from commenting, because who wants to hear a smug nobody like me proclaim that writing is easy? Probably no-one, but I comment anyway, because for me writing feels like dancing, a process of ease and flow. Because words come to my fingertips like birds to a Disney princess. Because, when I’m writing, I feel like I’m tapped into a rich seam of pure gold. Because, if I’m being honest, writing might just be only thing in life that I don’t find hard! Discovering my lover’s decaying body? That was hard. Bringing two neurodivergent children up with no support as a lone parent. Hard. Fighting for my kids in family court and in this country’s broken educational and mental health systems. Really damn hard. Chronic illness, undiagnosed ADHD, managing taxes and a business, putting food on the table night after night, remembering dates and train tickets? Hard, hard, hard. But, writing? For me, writing is a haven from all that, and when people insist that writing must be a struggle, I feel isolated in my joy. I feel that I’m not good enough or that I’m not trying hard enough, that I’m failing to conform to some long-established image of what a writer should be. It makes me feel that I don’t fit, even though I’ve spent my life creating opportunities for writers to feel included, creating spaces where they can thrive and feel less alone.
The myth of the tortured artist is just one of many writing cliches I struggle with. As a writing coach myself, I regularly come across accomplished wordsmiths who fail to identify themselves as writers because of some misguided notion that writers are not people like them. Writers, they believe, must have books on the shelves of Waterstones. Writers, real writers, must be published by Penguin or Bloomsbury, by ‘proper’ publishers. Writers should have rooms of their own with beautiful libraries. Writers, they think, are clever people with multiple degrees, probably from Oxford or Cambridge. Writers are educated, sophisticated people. Perhaps they wear tweed or cravats. They write feverishly in their lonely garrets, until they send themselves mad. They write at least a thousand words a day, of course, and are rarely seen in company. Maybe they smoke and drink absinthe. Probably they’re alcoholics. Usually, they’re white men…
To be taken seriously as a writer, we assume, is to pass some invisible test. Perhaps it’s why so many aspiring writers sign up for an expensive MA or industry-led course, looking for someone to deem them worthy enough to put pen to paper, hoping that someone will rubber stamp the legitimacy of their dreams and allow them access to the literary establishment. Like all of the writing projects I’ve established over the years (and there have been a few), I set up The Writers Workshop to counter some of these ideas, to bring together people who love words and stories in a thriving community of creativity and support. It’s a community that extends now beyond Sheffield, reaching writers from around the UK and even abroad, a community of aspiring, emerging and professional writers that, our recent research tells us, is seen by its members as friendly, inclusive and welcoming. This is music to our ears. And yet, in feedback from beyond our membership, we once more came up against the notion of the ‘serious’ writer and a perception that the very things that make our provision inclusive, could lead it to lack credibility in some quarters. Because, it seems, that if writing is accessible and available to everyone, if it’s joyful and fun, it’s sometimes perceived to be of a lower quality.
Which is a narrative we aim to challenge at The Writers Workshop. Who was it who determined that, in order to be valid, writing has to be serious? Or that writing can only be practised by a narrow elite? I’ve run thousands of workshops for almost thirty years with writers from five years old to eighty, in schools, homeless hostels, drug rehabs and hospices, and some of the most powerful voices I’ve discovered have belonged to people with little or no literary education. These voices I discover in workshops that are filled with light, colour and laughter, forged in a crucible of collective magic and wordplay. Speaking personally, though I may have transmuted my own pain into art, I don’t want to be in the business of being serious. Living is serious enough. I am in the business of joy and connection and play.
Of course, these things aren’t mutually exclusive. But I don’t believe that writers need to labour stoically in their lonely garrets in order to produce quality writing. So many award-winning writers have passed through our cosy, colourful space in Orchard Square and I’ve seen many prize-winning stories and journal publications birthed in the warm, supportive environment that I’ve created. The recent winner of the Sheffield Short Story competition actually wrote her winning tale when she was volunteering with my children’s Writing Club. This doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I’d posit that it was precisely the lack of pressure of the environment that allowed her creativity to surface. Other, more established writers, have arrived at The Writers Workshop blocked and disenfranchised, and have rediscovered their voices in this low-pressure space. There’s a freedom that comes with the playful creativity of an inclusive group setting that’s hard to replicate when staring at a blank page alone or even in a university environment. I regularly see people leave their writer’s block, impostor syndrome and ego at the door of The Writers Workshop and watch them fall in love with writing in this space.
I say, be gone those outdated ideas about tortured artists and their struggles. Be gone those preconceptions that separate writers into silos and hierarchies. Writing, like music, should bring people together, not divide them. There are as many different genres of writing and types of writer as there are musicians and styles of music, and the world is so much richer for the variety. In my workshops, I hear all of the voices and all of the stories. I delight in all of the writers and all of their work. Each has their place. Providing a space for those writers and their stories is my business. Yes, writing can be challenging, and making a living from writing certainly isn’t easy. But writing is still my joy. And being able to spend my days sharing words with others is a huge privilege. It’s better than going down the mines, that’s for sure. Writing is my thing. I’m so glad it found me, just like music has found my boy.
Beverley Ward is a writer, facilitator and writing coach. She’s the author of Dear Blacksmith – A Journey of Love and Loss, Archie Nolan: Family Detective and the children’s writing handbook, Writing Revolution. She’s also a published poet and the founder of The Writers Workshop, a writing community based in Sheffield. She lives in Sheffield with her two quirky teenagers and two over-fed cats.
