Just like playing a musical instrument or learning to dance, creative writing can be done better if it is taught. The writer sets out three ways of teaching it that would-be authors use and appreciate

I am always rather baffled when people ask me – and they frequently do – if I think creative writing can really “be taught”. The implication is nearly always that the questioner thinks that it cannot. Since I make a substantial part of my income teaching creative writing (usually online), this always seems a distinctly rude question: if I did not think it could be taught, it would be dishonest to teach it – and exploitative to be paid to teach it.

But it also seems to me to be a bit bizarre. Why on earth should creative writing be unteachable? No other creative skill is treated in this way – no one thinks that someone with natural musical talent cannot be taught to play the violin, for example, or that someone with artistic ability does not need to be taught the skills of sculpture, or that someone with physical ability doesn’t need to go to ballet class or be taught to ski.

I regularly read complaints that parents no longer teach their children to pray (even though we are resistant to the idea that “skill” is relevant here); people have always sought spiritual direction or “accompaniment” (a sort of teaching?) and, over many centuries, we have canonised individuals who have taught us how to do it.