Do the write thing

We may all have a book in us, but how to get it published? Christina Patterson spends four days learning from the experts

"The true aim of writing," Dr Johnson said, "is to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it." He was talking about reading, not writing, but that was in the days before you could do an MA in creative writing. Who wants to read a novel when you can write one instead?

"The true aim of writing," Dr Johnson said, "is to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it." He was talking about reading, not writing, but that was in the days before you could do an MA in creative writing. Who wants to read a novel when you can write one instead?

More than 120,000 books were published in this country last year, but that's nothing compared with the number that were written. And for all the talk of creative writing as therapy, it's hard to find anyone who does it purely for the pleasure of the craft. It's a private process that depends largely on a dream of public recognition. But how does an aspiring writer make a connection with an oversubscribed industry?

To answer this question, The New Writing Partnership, a new literary arts organisation in East Anglia, this month organised an intensive programme, over four days, of workshops and events for "emerging writers, publishing professionals and others in the literary world". The aim of this inaugural event, according to its director, Trevor Davies, was to "create a new interface between writers and the writing world". Was he nervous about this combination? "Well, a bit," he admits. "If they're just being a reading audience, people are usually very receptive and very obedient. But in bringing together writers and publishers, there was a risk that things could get very personal and very negative."

Katri Skala, the programme manager, agrees that aspiring writers and seasoned professionals could be a combustible mix. "But there's already a model for this kind of thing in the States," she explains, "and we thought it was about time to try it here."

It all starts on a practical note. In a workshop with the biographer Kathryn Hughes, we do an exercise on portraits. Hughes hands around a little pile of pictures and we're told to pick one that appeals and imagine their life in 15 minutes. A forty-something New Zealander thinks that the Regency woman in a red dress is a high-class prostitute. A Home Counties lady has turned a plain woman with a big nose into an Irish peasant. Philip, the group's lone man and one of many pensioners on the course, picks a flapper with a bob. His account is packed with detail - names of cars, lovers and husbands. Not bad for a quarter of an hour.

Next, it's the drama workshop, led by theatre directors Val Taylor and Paul Bourne. The aim is to "examine the principles of dramatic writing" and we do this by standing around in a circle and clapping. With a single clap being passed around the circle or to our neighbour on our right or left, we discover that this simple action can be a conversation, a source of conflict or a chance to show off. We are learning, apparently, the basic principles of the dramatic moment.

After more workshops, tutorials and "plenary sessions", we decamp to the assembly hall for "the Forum". It starts with "Beginnings", three concurrent panel discussions on submitting fiction, non-fiction and poetry. I am assigned the non-fiction panel, with agents Caroline Dawnay, Faith Evans and Peter Tallack. In a time of ever-shifting editors, they tell us, the agent is more important than ever. "Even as an agent, most of the stuff I send out is rejected by most publishers," says Tallack, a touch gloomily. "Don't give up the day job," he adds.

Next, as inspiration, perhaps, there are three sessions with writers who have given up the day job and survived. While my fellow journalists eavesdrop on conversations between Hugo Williams and George Szirtes or Blake Morrison and Susie Orbach, I listen to Graham Swift talking to UEA Professor of English Jon Cook. "There's no secret formula," Swift tells us, disappointingly. "It certainly doesn't get easier. In some ways it gets harder. When I start a new novel now, I learn to write all over again."

Novelist Jim Crace agrees. "Of course it won't be easy!" he announces in his keynote lecture, "Letter to a New Writer". He adds, "Thomas Mann described a good writer as someone for whom writing was more difficult than it was for other people." His lecture takes the form of seven imaginary letters to aspiring writers who have pestered him for advice. His response is witty and bracing. "Take a deep breath and just make it up! Sorry," he adds before delivering the final blow, "but I cannot read your manuscript."

Over the next few days, we hear more about every stage in the journey from brain to groaning bookshop table. Poets Lavinia Greenlaw and Alan Jenkins talk about poems that have taken them up to 10 years to write. "A poem is never finished, only abandoned," says Jenkins, quoting Auden, quoting Valéry. In a later session on "The Critics and the Media" he adds, "If you see a book as a success because it sells a lot of copies, you might as well give up criticism." For many around the room, it's not hard to guess that selling a lot of books would be a start.

"Nobody should be publishing all these books," says Andrew Franklin, publisher of the mega-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves. "I wish fewer people would write and fewer people would publish books." Others on the panel are less gloomy, but the fur flies when the discussion moves to money. Franklin calls agent David Godwin "a Thatcherite" and Godwin's cheeks go scarlet. Eyes shine with excitement. Next year, we agree, it should take place in a gladiatorial arena.

In the morning, over coffee and pastries, there's a discussion on the most important question of all. "Why Write?" asks Trevor Davies, chairing it. "To mend my relationship with the world," says the poet and novelist John Burnside. "Because I enjoy it," says the novelist and broadcaster Kate Mosse. "To be heard by people other than one's parents," says Rebecca Swift, writer and founding director of the Literary Consultancy, an organisation which offers professional editorial advice to writers who are not yet published. An anaesthetist in the audience sums it up: "Writing is a kind of meditation, an escape from reality. It's important to write because it gives you much more pleasure than most other things in life."

At the end of our summing up, on Sunday afternoon, I ask the audience if they are gloomy. They smile and shake their heads. According to the feedback forms, 80 per cent of them want to come back for a second dose next year. "Human kind/ Cannot bear very much reality," said T S Eliot in the Four Quartets. Sometimes it can.