A470 Articles and Debates

More courses, more forms, more fees

To: The Letters Editor, A470

The booklet Getting to Where You Want to Be, included in the September 2008 issue of A470, was a publication of a kind I’ve frequently come across in the various jobs I’ve had over the years. It is designed for writers who want to plan their literary career by setting themselves targets in the approved managerial style. Professional Development Planning, it tells us, offers the chance to reflect on:

"a) Where you are now
b) Where you want to be
c) How you might move from point a) to point b)."

There follows a multi-part form which writers are encouraged to fill in. The document is dotted with jolly and helpful comments like: "Tired? Take a Break" and passages purporting to be quotes from "writers and literary professionals" who have helped the writers create their guide by providing "generously frank feedback". These are along the lines of "I found this exercise very useful. At the moment I’m busy on rewrites of a novel and am itching to start the next so it was very nice to take a step back and see where I am." (None of this frank feedback is negative, I notice.) The document is produced by a body called literaturetraining, "the UK’s only dedicated provider of free information and advice on professional development for writers and literature professionals", and credits nine partner organizations, including the National Association for Writers in Education, Academi and Apples & Snakes.

You wouldn’t know from the tone of the leaflet that it was anything to do with writing as opposed to management. The tone of the "writers"’ comments was particularly odd, completely lacking in evidence of personality or a capacity for independent thought. My first instinct was to throw it into the bin, but on second thoughts I’m finding it more sinister than that. In my experience the bodies who draw up such documents, whether internal departments in the organization you work for or self-appointed professional standards guardians, are hungry for power. It would not surprise me if literaturetraining decided that the next step after this "self-help guide" was to persuade arts funding bodies that publishers who don’t "look after" their writers by forcing them to fill in forms of this kind are not worthy of support. And the step after that would be to provide training courses to help the writers learn to fill in the forms (again, if they wanted to get published, and the publishers wanted the money, the courses, designed solely for their benefit and to help improve professional standards in the writing industry, would be compulsory). There would no doubt be a small charge, payable either by the publishers or the writers themselves, to cover administrative costs, but in return you would get to be a member of the Institute of Such and Such - essential nowadays if you want to get taken on by most publishers. And after that the next stage is to redesign the system to make it even better: more forms, more courses, more fees, and you suddenly find that your membership of the Institute of Whatever is no longer valid to ensure your publisher’s funding unless you sign up for the new ones, which are of course infinitely better than the old ones, and are helping to make this country a more creative place.

Am I being paranoid? I’ve seen it happen in other fields.

Yours,

Matthew Francis
www.7greenhill.freeserve.co.uk

Editor’s note: This article was published in A470 #50.
Getting Where You Want to Be: A DIY guide to professional development planning for writers and literature professionals is published by literature training. For further information visit www.literaturetraining.com