Graduate creative writing programmes aren’t new. A Google search reveals that the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop has been running for nearly seventy years now. The university began accepting creative work as theses for advanced degrees in 1922, and now offers a two-year programme culminating in a creative thesis and an MFA degree. If national recognition is a valid indicator, the Iowa workshop can boast considerable success: over the years Iowa’s alumni (Flannery O’Connor, Rita Dove, Jane Smiley, John Irving, Andre Dubus et al.) have won a dozen Pulitzer Prizes, numerous National Book Awards and can count four Poets Laureate among their numbers.

The most commonly voiced objection to Creative Writing programmes – that ‘writing can’t be taught’ – can be countered by pointing out that this isn’t what any writing programme sets out to do, anyway. Entry is almost always competitive: graduate admission requires submission of a portfolio of work, either published or of publishable standard. It is assumed that most applicants can already write. The purpose of such courses is something else entirely, as the Iowa Workshop points out in its ‘philosophy’: ‘Though we agree in part with the popular insistence that writing cannot be taught, we exist and proceed on the assumption that talent can be developed, and we see our possibilities and limitations as a school in that light.’

Claims similar to Harvey’s – implying that such courses produce a particular (and somehow inferior) style of writing – don’t require too much in the way of refutation, either. The small sample of Iowa graduates listed earlier produce work that is clearly unclassifiable. It is impossible to find much of a common thread, let alone some version of a ‘house style’, among such a variety of talented writers.

The MA (Writing) programme at University of Technology, Sydney, one of the first such research degrees in Australia, was established in 1991. When I enrolled in 1996, the degree was already highly regarded – entry was competitive, and all class members had been published or had their works performed. We all arrived with a clear idea of the sort of writing we were interested in. If our writing tutors had wanted to push a particular theory, style or genre-laden barrow, they would have had a hard time of it. We enthusiastically engaged with, for instance, Professor Muecke’s particular interest in ficto-criticism, but we had our own barrows to push, our own stories to tell.

The class was characterised more by its diversity than by its similarities. Budding novelists, short story writers, poets and playwrights, none of us had much in common other than that we were writers. No doubt we all had different reasons for undertaking the programme, but I doubt that any of us had any illusion that such a degree would actually teach us to write. I knew – as I’d imagine we all knew at this point in our careers – that writing, like music, requires a great deal of practice. As with music, proficiency is enhanced by contact with other writing. Obviously, reading widely is fundamental, but the opportunity to associate with other writers (unique to such programmes) is also profoundly valuable.

The classwork component of the course was made up of both theoretical studies and writing workshops. In writing workshops, each student reads a sample of his or her work, which is then critiqued by the class. This was no cathartic group therapy situation; nor was there any destructive criticism or unkindness. Guided by our experienced tutors, we quickly became adept at recognising the loose threads in one another’s works in progress (in matters both technical and metaphorical); at suggesting possibilities; occasionally even at providing solutions. This ability to discern what works, what doesn’t and why is an invaluable skill for any professional, and one that’s harder to acquire when polished, exemplary works are the only ones available.

At no time were we given any explicit ‘instruction’ on how to write. Rather, we were given the opportunity to refine our work. I suspect some critics imagine that on entering the classroom, Creative Writing students are handed a mystical tome, divulging some sort of secret formula, or at the very least clear instructions on how to write the perfect (regulation) novel, poem or script; or that students are subject to manipulation by some Svengali-like figure whose stylistic and thematic influence is all-pervading. But there’s no such manual – no such tutor – and I doubt very much whether such impressionable students exist anywhere.