Skip to Content

On teaching creative writing

3 March 2008

'I tell them to forget about the business. That's nothing to do with me... They'll figure it out in the end. If they haven't got talent, you're not going to give it to them, but they will have it because you've chosen them.

But they might turn out to not have will; which you can't always judge very easily at the beginning. If they don't have will, they're screwed. But you can't make them write every day or get up early in the morning; you can give them an example, or tell them what they should be doing, and they might listen.'

Peter Carey, talking to Erica Wagner in The Times