On: Why I Write and How I Write by Ruth Hutchinson
I have been asked by Keith Livesey to contribute to this series as he must believe or think I’ve something worth saying despite not being a Historian. Keith and I are very old friends, and I remember the first day we met. It was sometime in the spring of 1996 and I was walking down Oxford Road close to All Saints Campus of M.M.U. He was flogging a political paper at the time, standing outside the Student Union and asked me to sign a petition. He used the word “antidemocratic”, and I didn’t know what that meant exactly, so I asked, “What do you mean by this?” He then explained, had a nice way about him, and I signed my name; I found myself in agreement, wanting to defend democratic rights against antidemocratic practices. He looked at my signature and commented with a smile: “It’s interesting to know what a fellow Livesey thinks?” We started a correspondence, he changed my life and the rest is history. I owe a lot to Keith and as we’re not spring chickens anymore, I’d like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude despite our differences. Tomorrow is not a given; too much in life is taken for granted. Time passes and we wish we’d said more to those who passed on when they were alive. This is my opportunity to give thanks openly and honestly to a good friend while there’s time.
With all of that being said, I would like to tell the reader what I am. I’m not a Historian, as already mentioned, but I am an artist, gardener, mother, sister, daughter, crafter, scientist, retired C.A.B Generalist Adviser, revolutionary thinker and an Allied Health Professional. I have a B.A. with (Hons) and a BSc with (Hons). In the latter, I attained the highest first out of my entire cohort. I worked hard for that degree whilst bringing up my daughter single handed so I am not bereft of having experienced many struggles of everyday life. I am a humble human and write this essay to help anyone who struggles to put pen to paper. God knows how I have struggled, but I sometimes found a way through and succeeded. I will share my struggles, what caused them and how I overcame them; the rest will be up to you.
It would be really easy to write a mechanical piece about the A, B, and C’s of writing. It might go along the following lines: first you do this, then you do that, etc, and bingo! Before you know it, you’re a writer. That would be as dull as dishwater and would not begin to highlight anything insightful for me. It would be a one-sided list of tips that you could probably get off the internet, and if I did do this, it would beg the following question: Would I be bringing anything new to this series? Writing and thought are far more complex, and although tips are useful, we’d all have become writers years ago if all that was needed were tips! It also needs to be said that I can think of many more reasons why most people don’t write than do. This essay will, therefore, be far longer than others in the series and is aimed at a much broader audience. I am not pitching this to academia; it is aimed at the many and not the few. People will make up their minds as to whether they find this work helpful.
My family of origin is pretty messed up and complicated, but certainly not unique. I am the middle child with two brothers, one on either side of me. I was born to an Electronics Engineer who was brought up by an R.A.F Warrant Officer and a cleaner/lollipop lady who left school at 14 without formal qualifications. They are from very different class backgrounds, with an age gap of 7 years. This is more significant than it ought to be because one was born one year into the Second World War, and the other was born 3 years post-war. They were born into very different worlds. They had completely different outlooks, psychologies, expectations and attitudes to children and their rearing. The home slowly descended into chaos and a battleground after my younger brother was born. I forgive them for I understand them; only living in chaos neither provides the conditions to sit down with mum and dad to read nor have your mum or dad read to you. My dad’s attitude was if, “It’s in them, it’s in them!” a very passive attitude that smacks of biological determinism. My dad had no interest in how his acorns would grow into mighty oaks and believed it was all to be done by the school system as he’d done his bit, which wasn’t his job. I read very little as a child before starting school and preferred picture books and watching television. Thankfully for my dad, the 1970s had superb educational children’s programmes. I loved the 1970s children’s programmes from Tony Hart Oliver Postgate and productions from Cosgrove Hall. This is where and how my love of drawing and being creative sprang from, as well as watching my mother knit and sew.
My family life was difficult at times. My older brother was a bully and perceived me as a threat or a target for humiliation, so there was quite a lot of anguish at times in my everyday life. There are only 22 months between us, and when I came along, I’m sure his little world was turned a bit “topsy turvy”, shall we say. He was never disciplined for his behaviour, and I often felt cheated and invisible. Feeling injustice and having no voice from such a young age affects you. Having parents who fought (clashes could be quite violent at times) created a hostile environment, and I became a bit shy.
It soon became apparent that by the time I was 7, my needs wouldn’t be met half the time (emotional and intellectual needs), so I started looking elsewhere and escaping into school and playing out virtually all the time with my few friends. I wasn’t brave enough to make my friends’ and the friends I had would choose me and not the other way around. I was extremely passive in this area and ended up with friends who would later show they were no good for me. Not because they were delinquents but because of their issues and upbringing. My primary school was amazing as it was progressive and naturally didn’t focus on the “3 R’s” traditionally and formally. So, although I was a bright child, the school didn’t pressure us or give us an imposed rigid structure from above. The teacher wasn’t an authoritarian character that was dictating to us. The teachers in this school were more of guides and facilitators to our learning. They embodied healthy authority and provided us with leadership. This meant that the child led and decided their learning activities for the day and let me explain how this went down. I don’t know any other person who went to a primary school like the one I did, and I would be extremely interested to hear if anyone did. We were the only school in the area out of 6 others nearby and were called “Wheelockians”. It was very amusing in retrospect, but at the time, it left me feeling less than my counterparts from other schools. We were known to be different, and this labelling was very telling.
Some teachers at secondary school saw us differently and weren’t behind this type of school, probably because they measured success by whether we passed the stupid Richmond Test or not. Absolute Bullshit, in my opinion, because what did it measure? We had such a rich learning experience and were free of fear, and this quasi-11 plus exam couldn’t measure that. If a teacher measures success by the limited yardstick of the Richmond Test then they are extremely limited as human beings. Education shouldn’t be about filling the child with pointless facts and figures but surely to develop them into well rounded human beings that can face the world and contribute to it, and even impart some wisdom. In this endeavour, our education system truly fails. Still, a different philosophy once existed, tested in reality and moved on from a theoretical hypothesis developed by Piaget and Montessori. This type of teaching and school has been strangled to death by every single government since 1979.
I started primary school in April of 1979 at age four, and I recall sitting on the floor cross-legged in a home bay as the school was completely open-planned. For a good number of weeks, we were given free milk at a set time each day, which I later learned had been taken away by none other than Maggie Thatcher, the infamous “Milk Snatcher”.
The school was great, and we had there Sheep, hens, ducks, hamsters, terrapins, clay, glazes, kilns, a large library, and a large practical area where you could make a mess and paint all day. We had an incubator where the eggs from the hens were placed to hatch. We had a woodland area, a massive playing field, the best school dinners, book fairs, Christmas fairs, a nit nurse, Sport’s day, a cookery area, a mobile building, a greenhouse, and I could go on. We had teachers who could play the guitar and the piano and believed in their profession and that a child learns through play and instruction. We were taught how to read music and play the recorder. We also had spinning wheels where the fleece from the sheep was spun into yarn after being carded. I recall bookbinding and covering our handmade books with paper that we decorated with marbling.
We watched the sheep being shorn and had a pond that we would dip into with nets and examine the water boatmen from our “haul”. Looking back, we had huge human and material resources, which was a great place to be. However, this is not a criticism: it didn’t turn me into a great “writer/reader” other than Judy Blume at age 11. That’s the level I got to, which is perfectly respectable and age-appropriate. Blume deals with themes that a young girl like me would soon come to encounter and it was forearming oneself. She spoke to me, and her books were devoured by those of us living in the bloody real world. Those of us who were being and not striving to be what our parents wanted (mine didn’t seem that bothered) nor what some freaky teacher thought we should be. I enjoyed a wonderful primary school education. I had a very happy time at primary school and can recall so much of it, like yesterday. No trauma happened that I’ve ever needed to block out, and there wasn’t a competitive atmosphere except on Sports Day. We were allowed to grow organically, but by 1986, that was about to change dramatically, which I will come to later.
So, at my primary school with so much great stuff to do and be allowed to do, reading and writing wasn’t some activity that we were bullied into mastering. We were taught through the breakthrough method, which gave us a great foundation. I remember real excitement after I’d learnt a new word as it was put into our dictionary booklets and I remember taking to it quite easily. I must have been about five years old, and one day, I desperately and excitedly asked my dad if I could read to him. He said “No,” and I never asked again. I was quietly upset and shocked, a little like I’d done something wrong, and children are generally acquiescent and I found myself accepting that it was just something he wouldn’t do for me. Development of my reading and writing skills wasn’t being nurtured at home, and my dad would watch B.B.C. Open University lectures that were way over our heads. We left him to it. He did his own thing and had his reasons and attitudes that I would learn about later. I got the maximum of input around reading and writing from school, it would have been more, but they rightly focused on so much other stuff. Even our P.E. lessons were great. After climbing the ropes, I recall the delight and glowing sense of achievement the first time I touched the main hall ceiling.
So, I went to an all-girls secondary school where I failed the “Richmond Test” beforehand and was put into a lower band form. This might be unfamiliar to some as I’m 50 soon, and things were different back then. But this is how things were. It was before the internet, mobile phones, and society believed in the right to a childhood. There was no sexualisation of children or at least no outward display of it in the community. This is not to say that nefarious and sinister activity wasn’t happening behind closed doors somewhere, but I certainly wasn’t aware or privy to it. Self-harming and eating disorders were non-existent. There was no single case of this at primary school (1979-1986) or the odd case at secondary school (1986-1991). I had a tiny tears doll and not a dreaded B.R.A.T.Z. Doll, for example, and we dressed appropriately for our age and did age-appropriate things like not taking drugs or carrying knives. Children were children and weren’t tried as adults in a court of law either. Different for sure! I think giving context to the time I’m talking about is important. So much has changed and that change has neither been in the right direction nor for the right reasons. Examining this would require a lot of work and is for another time. Still, it is safe to say that education across all levels has suffered due to the interference and policies of every single government since 1979! A lot has been lost.
I believe the breakthrough method of teaching a child to write and read will always be above the phonics system. I have a child who is a millennial who was taught via phonics. How did anyone ever learn before this revolutionary phonics system, I might ask? I believe my child learnt despite it and not because of it, and phonics is a reactionary and cheap way of teaching a class that is so heterogeneous there’s no other option. This was applied to all schools, even if the class demographic was more homogenous. This is why you get outraged parents who don’t agree with trying to be all things to everyone, as what was worth conserving (breakthrough method, for example) gets diluted or completely lost and cast aside. It also creates a chasm between some children and parents like me who learn in a completely different way. It’s hard to bridge sometimes. What working-class person has the time to learn a whole new system when the one they had worked perfectly fine? It raises more questions than it answers.
Working-class parents have become so bogged down by these new radical teaching methods that faith in our education has waned for a long time. Is it any wonder that homeschooling started to become a viable option? Of course, this isn’t the only reason for homeschooling, but it is for some, and there are more homeschooled kids, most notably because the parents reject the school for some reason.
At secondary school, things completely changed but I still didn’t develop into a writer! Certainly not a good one. There was no confidence in my writing and a resignation. Essentially, although I digress at times, the picture here is of a working-class kid (me) living in a fairly affluent area but struggling with a chaotic home life whilst surrounded by kids with more harmony outside of school. I bumbled along, not knowing any different, and the conditions weren’t there at that time to improve. The books in my house were either my dad’s advanced technical books with two fiction books thrown in, “The Swiss Family Robinson” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. I only found those after I was 18. My mum’s small collection consisted of Mill’s and Boon's romantic paperbacks, cookery books and knitting/sewing patterns. My mum is a wonderful woman and hid the fact that she has dyslexia as best she could. And I was so ashamed due to living in the area I did that when she wrote a note to secondary school about an absence or the need to be let out of school to go into town at lunchtime to buy fabric for a Home Economics project for example, that I would rewrite it and forge her signature the shame was so bad.
My dad was unapproachable and saw his daughter as her mother’s problem. I am trying to explain here the atmosphere around writing and books. I thought that because my mum couldn’t do it very well, I would never be that great at it. I wasn’t pushed, stretched or encouraged to improve as I was a woman who would marry and make babies anyway, so what need was there to put much effort in with me? God, how wrong my parents were, and I’m sure I’ve been a major disappointment at times, but I was able to forge my paths and change my trajectory where writing was concerned, but this change didn’t happen until my 20s. Even though I can pinpoint the shift (meeting Keith) in my reading materials (a qualitative and quantitative change), the writing didn’t develop until years later; it was not until I was 39 that I put my new skills, knowledge and attitudes into action. I could read at secondary school, don’t get me wrong, but it was for escapism and I skipped any words I didn’t understand and gave little attention to them. I paid no attention to the format of the writing either.
Punctuation for me was capitals at the beginning of a sentence, a few commas and a full stop at the end. There was no mastery of colons, semi-colons or correct paragraphing. I got by (badly), and any manuscript I submitted was covered in red ink, shouting constantly at my many mistakes. I just thought I was my mother’s daughter, which was normal. I realised I’d had major writing problems in my early 20s and was even more confused. So confused that trying to express thoughts and feelings articulately was like pulling teeth without anaesthetic; agonising, time-consuming and a losing game. I didn’t even know what a metaphor or literary device was until my daughter asked me when I was around 36. The internet is a truly wonderful thing in the right hands. We move on if we can have the courage to admit our short comings and want to do better. First, confess what you don’t know and not be ashamed of where you are. It most likely wasn’t your fault but a combination of factors beyond your control. It certainly was for me.
At G.C.S.E., I took Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography, French, Maths and English. Out of all of those subjects, I hated English. I hated English, and it made me physically sick. The stress I would feel at trying to answer the essay question and understand Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Miller, or Orwell was just crippling, and I felt tremendous shame at not understanding it or being able to formulate ideas around the question. I didn’t understand and was too unsupported by my teachers, parents and friends to develop further. Because I thrived in the sciences, they thought I was fine. I wasn’t fine and I didn’t have the skill or inclination to seek the right books to guide me to improve. I didn’t know they even existed! I just felt stupid when English was concerned and resigned myself to suffering. I was a kid, and nobody taught me any better.
In this area, I seriously underachieved. Out of 17 assignments for G.C.S.E. English, I submitted 11. I would not produce the work as the stress and shame I had around this was incapacitating. I struggled with writing and thinking and it was totally in silence. Somehow, I evaded being pursued by teachers for the missing assignments. It just got swept under the rug. I was never disciplined with the threat of detention, nor was I threatened with parental involvement. No teacher told me, "We’ll have to inform your parents of this”. Nothing happened about it other than my internal stress and shame engulfed me at times with English assignments. And I, too, hid it, just like my mum’s dyslexia went on without much detection, or it was passively accepted as the inevitable outcome of poor genes or poor education. Either way, my crappy-quality essays weren’t earmarked as something to address.
Although I kept quiet, looking back, there were very subtle expressions of my disquiet, but they were slight and still within the scale of what was normal for someone my age. I was always clean and well-dressed, so no one thought I was neglected. Materially, in most areas, my needs were met (except the books), I was nourished, I had dental care, and I didn’t freeze as I had a warm, clean bed. Still, I was neglected emotionally and intellectually without a shadow of a doubt. I never tried to talk about it; I didn’t have a voice at home and didn’t believe my parent could find a solution even if I had. I hadn’t much of a voice anywhere else except with friends my age.
Looking back, we were taught English G.C.S.E. badly. I would go as far as to say that it was appalling. When we read “Animal Farm” it was delivered to us as this is a political satire. Stalin’s and Trotsky’s names were mentioned briefly, but I had no idea who they were, what they did, and what political satire meant. At 14, I had no idea of this or way of finding out. I think this was one of the assignments I just ignored. The teacher didn’t go on to explain anything about the Russian Revolution. As I didn’t take history but chose geography, I couldn’t rely on any knowledge I may have acquired elsewhere. I didn’t have any books at home that I could paw over. There were no encyclopaedias or anything like that. Shakespeare, I, too, hated.
I didn’t relate to the language as many don’t. I didn’t know you could buy books that walk you through what is being expressed, so I neither developed an understanding nor an appreciation. I drew a blank, moved on and the same with Arthur Miller to an extent. We read The Crucible, and I was disturbed by it. My only reaction to this novel was: “What the hell happened to innocent until proven guilty?” None of my peers responded similarly to it, and I felt completely isolated, and there was something wrong with me. Again, we weren’t given any historical context to these novels. Somehow, at 14 years of age, I was expected to know all about “McCarthyism” and “The Salem Witch Hunts” and discuss all of Miller’s literary devices, motifs, and themes and do it all with perfect spelling, a broad vocabulary and perfect grammar. I had no cat in hell's chance at delivering on this, so I repeatedly swerved on such a demand.
But here’s the thing: I wasn’t conscious of this at the time, but I’m certainly mindful of it now and have been since my late 20s after I started to try and grapple with improving my writing. On reflection, the only essay I ever wrote for my English G.C.S.E. confidently and competently was “The Chrysalids” by John Wyndham. For a change, I wanted to read this book and having prior scientific knowledge was my saviour. Here, I could scrape a B grade for once, but because that was unusual for me, I wrote it off as a fluke. It wasn’t a fluke at all. I understood because I could see what he was driving at because I knew the scientific field. Not studying history at G.C.S.E. was a big mistake looking back, especially as it had always been my best subject. It would have been the candle in the dark I so desperately needed to see and be able to write. I’m not good at writing and bullshitting my way through anything I don’t understand. We are what we are, and I’d rather have integrity than peddle another version of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”.
I would also like to add that I had three jobs at the time of my G.C.S.E.. On Thursday and Friday evenings I would collect milk money for three hours. I’d walk about 4-5 miles in this time each evening. I had a Saturday job working from 12 pm -5 pm, and I would babysit Saturday nights until midnight. Money was tight, and my brothers and I were made to get jobs. Looking back, money wasn’t tight. It was badly managed due to the discord in my parent’s marriage. The reason this pisses me off is because I secretly wanted to be a Doctor. I concluded that I wasn’t bright enough and was from the wrong side of the street. My parents never knew this; I don’t think they know it today. Getting into Medical School would have required absolute dedication, commitment and the right conditions for serious study. I had none of these. Arguments could erupt in the blink of an eye, and although sporadic in rhythm, they showed no signs of abating. Having gotten all B’s at G.C.S.E without any revision and a C for the English language, such grades, from my perspective, were just more nails in the coffin of my dream. My dream was then buried and went on to present itself as an utter fantasy. Due to this, I went on to align myself to a completely different path.
I want to come back to the matter of the Richmond test that I talked briefly about earlier in this essay. I briefly remember the day it happened. It was a rather uneventful and business-as-usual morning until year 7 (as it was called back then) was ushered into the main hall and directed to one of the many single desks. We weren’t warned or told about what would happen beforehand in any way, shape or form. I don’t recall any letters being sent home or mum and dad wishing me well. I remember nothing surrounding this event but the event itself. There was an exam paper on each desk, and we were asked to answer the questions in a set amount of time. I wasn’t stressed, worried or anything. I did my best, and we all walked away and it was forgotten as far as I was concerned. I don’t recall talking to friends about it or exchanging anything with anybody. No teachers brought it up, and we moved on. We were all going to secondary school and didn’t know there was a rite of passage to this so I never put the two and two together.
The only question I remember was about a map and being asked about coordinates. I was 10, had never read a map, and had no idea what coordinates were. I wasn’t even bothered that I didn’t know. I was a summer baby born in July, so I accepted, not knowing as much as a September or winter baby. This gap between different children is played down, but it matters. Put a summer baby alongside a September baby, and they will have 9 months of knowledge and experience, if not more. You’re always at a disadvantage under what month you were born, whether you like it or not. It can only be bridged for the average child if all things were equal by concerted effort.
It would only be later in life that I would realise what the “Richmond Test” was for and its significance. I bombed that test and I know this because I was put into a “lower band” form at high school. I didn’t think I was in a lower band form until the end of the first year as I was the brightest in my “lower band” class and got top in every exam. I was moved into an “upper band” form and cried with sadness when I heard the news. I was happy where I was, liked my normal, nice friends who were quite pleased and didn’t feel like I didn’t fit in. I was, therefore, moved from a predominately working-class cohort to a lower-middle-class/middle-class cohort. I hated it, and believe me, this layer was far more competitive and bitchy than I’d ever have thought. I got the piss taken out of me by a particularly arrogant and entitled individual because I once said that L.Cornes was my “best” friend. Bestest isn’t exactly correct, I know (who cares at 11 years old anyway?), but it was the venom with which she desired to humiliate me that caused me alarm. I had no issue with being corrected, only how it was done. This is what they were like. I was called “thick” to my face by what I thought was a close friend, and another so-called friend would like to say such things as “Wow, that’s a big word for you”. It was a climate of less than. I was made to feel less than by these people, and it unfortunately gained a lot of traction and worked.
The new cohort was not nice. I didn’t relate well; I identified myself as working class and quite normal. I didn’t have a horse or a Pilot for a “daddy”. I couldn’t play the clarinet, flute or piano to grade 6,7 or 8, and I lived in a modest three-bed house and not a five-bed house on a posh housing estate, for example. I was placed there because I did okay in exams but didn’t like being there. Being moved also impacted my English as I felt less than in this context. I survived, but I wasn’t at home, shall we say. The Richmond test was a little like an 11-plus exam. The Girl’s School was once a modern secondary school, and there was a grammar school, too, at the same time. The Grammar School ceased to be such when I moved up and was just a boy’s school. However, after the secondary modern model was ditched and my secondary school became a single-sex school, the “Richmond Test” was used to stream kids. Based on the results, it couldn’t be excluded, but it sure enjoyed sieving through “ability” and grouping “similar” together instead of making a mixed ability class.
I continued to get my head down and was good in some areas. My education from 11-15 ( remember, I’m a summer baby and have sat my G.C.S.E.’s before turning 16) was all about passing exams. It was pretty boring towards the end, and we just went through the motions of it. I enjoyed science the most because it taught me something new and useful, and I grasped it. I wasn’t competitive, so I wouldn't say I liked sports even though I was okay. Art was also dull because of the girls I had to take this class with and how it was taught. The resources were also a bit thin on the ground here. Luckily, I had one friend in this class, and we were not strictly outcasts, but we did not swim effortlessly with the stream. It was the competitive climate that drew me in. Cooperation and collaboration are more superior orientations and one of my mum’s refrains is: “Two heads are always better than one!” She had many a saying, and so did my dad. They have stuck with me to this day. They weren’t perfect, but they weren’t intrinsically bad people. Just two people struggling a lot of the time like everyone else in the lower middle/ working class. But they didn’t overcome their limitations and work towards solutions. That’s the crime and failure as it made life far more difficult than it needed to have been and needless suffering resulted.
So far, this essay should be called On: Not Being Able to Write. I make no excuses or wish to spin it in any other way. I had huge struggles with writing and comprehension where English was concerned, and I’m sure I’ll never be alone in this. However, it stopped me from doing what I wanted, so after gaining my secondary education, I studied “A level” chemistry, biology and art. There was no essay writing here and I deliberately dropped general studies as I didn’t want to write any essays. Unfortunately for me, level art required a dissertation, and my woes came back with a vengeance, and I played truant. I always felt ill as I went to a posh sixth form college where lots had been privately educated and had the arrogance that goes with that. I suffered in this period, and from my report, it is documented that I had 84 absences in the lower sixth. Despite this, I got my A levels, which weren’t that remarkable. I did manage to get an A grade in art, the only A grade I’d ever had, so I threw myself into this and went to Art College, thinking it would be easier. It wasn’t any easier, and I was lost, not having a clear idea of where I was going and what I wanted to do.
Eventually, two years after my A levels, I got a place at University for an arts degree. Three months into this bloody shite show, I knew I’d made a big mistake. Not knowing how to remedy this, I carried on in a state of depression. Other reasons in the background also affected me, but I had no idea how to solve them. I endured this and suffered. There was writing on this degree, much more than I’d anticipated and I was met again with myself and my inadequacy around writing. At the time, I did not know just how bad things were regarding the degree itself. I thought it was just me due to the less-than mentality that I’d developed being educated alongside “mean girls” and originating from humble beginnings. After the first year of this degree 33% had dropped out! I later learnt that the degree I was enrolled on had had more complaints than any other degree in the entire University. I was shocked by this, but particularly shocked at learning it was possible to complain to someone. I had no knowledge of this or anyone in my life who could have heard my concerns and signposted me to a place that might listen. I hadn’t a clue. Some people referred to some of our tutors as witches!
Although there were problems with this degree course, I didn’t help myself being so depressed. I, too, was to blame a bit here because I never attended a single art history lecture in my first year. I didn’t believe it was useful and that I would even understand it, so I skived them all. It may have helped me, but I was at where as was at. Despite not attending the lectures, I still had to submit an essay for this module and earn credits. We were given five titles, which I ignored for a long time. I ignored it until the night before and painted myself into a corner. There was no way out of this other than putting pen to paper. I just wrote and did the best I could. It was by hand, written in a black fountain pen on lined A4 paper. There was no editing or reworking of this piece whatsoever. I handed it in, forgot about it, and expected to perform quite badly and took a bit of solace in the fact that at least I’d tried. Our essays were returned a couple of weeks later, and something really strange happened, and I developed quite a profound cognitive dissonance. I was only three marks off the first despite grammatical and spelling errors. I didn’t get it.
I was so concerned, alarmed and doubtful that I made an appointment with the assessor of my essay. She was taken aback as students would usually come to her asking for it to be reassessed because they weren’t happy with their grades. After all, it was thought to be too low. I was pleased but confused as I didn’t believe it was correct, and she’d marked me higher than I deserved. I was so confused that I cried in her office, and she didn’t know what to do with me. She said, " even though there are mistakes that I’ve highlighted, your overall arguments are sound, compelling and showed more thought than any of the others”. I listened to what she had to say but still didn’t believe her. I thought it was just another fluke, a good day, and I was lucky enough to have something to say as I’d picked the correct essay title out of the five on offer. Despite this achievement that no one other than me knew about, having no one to celebrate this success with meant that I didn’t have a countering force to my already ingrained attitudes. It was a real success, but I continued with my fear of writing and still didn’t improve.
What changed for me was when I met Keith. Subscribing to the political paper and reading real stuff that was deeply interesting changed me. Nothing at University was all that interesting, but this stuff was gold. The fact that I didn’t understand everything didn’t matter. It showed me how little I knew and wanted to know and understand. I bought book after book after book. I remember my older brother commenting to my mum around this time. He said: “What’s wrong with her mum? She’s always got her head in a book?” It wasn’t normal practice in my house, and it showed. But I carried on and would read into the early hours. There was no structure to this or guidance which could have helped, I just knew I knew nothing but as sure as hell wanted to. It was tough. I bought books on many subjects: economics, politics, art, history, film and philosophy. Some weren’t the best examples, but I trusted they were all sound because they’d been printed. This isn’t true of a book, but I didn’t understand this at the time, only having had children’s books at home. But when I look at the books I did have in childhood, they are fantastic examples of illustrated children’s literature. I was really lucky and privileged to have had those that I did. Hindsight is wonderful if you are willing to look back objectively, with honesty and humility, as then you can learn something unknown.
The 1960s and 1970s were a golden age for children’s books; I may write about this in the future. I have a strong desire to write and illustrate one of my own. I have a body of work and illustrations in my portfolio (that I’ve kept hidden away) that would lend themselves well to this sort of thing. Maybe it will be something I can pull off one day if I’m lucky and all the stars are aligned in my favour.
At this point, I’d like to say that if anyone is struggling to put pen to paper, please stop and think. Everyone can write, whether it’s a simple note, letter, or shopping list. Forget the formalities around writing for now, as that is something that can be gained later. If you get hung up on the slightest little things, they will become much bigger things that will stand in your way. Yes, writing has a form to it, depending on its function. A list is simply a list as an aide memoir and doesn’t need to be anything else. Depending on the audience and what it’s about and for, an essay will have a different form altogether. A short fictional story will have another form. Poetry has a different form altogether, but it is most certainly related to its function, and there are no hard and fast rules about content in any writing. Your audience will influence the content if you want to educate and inform them. The language will differ greatly if you write for a small, specialised audience. Who are you writing for matters a great deal?
Most of my writing until now has been to pass exams and was a means to a definite end. Writing for pleasure, I’m sure, will be different again. For academic or “serious” writing, you must have ideas, a fairly reasonable vocabulary, and be willing to work on the conventions of how it’s presented. It will take work and effort, but there’s plenty of instruction in books or online. First, you will have to read and live to become a writer. Be picky about who you read and why. If possible, read those you identify with most, as this will strengthen you. Then read those you don’t. A lot of precious time can be wasted trying to make sense of rubbish. It can drive you insane if you are isolated and new to an area. Some books can leave you feeling profoundly dumb when they have deliberately been written so badly they are obscure and illusive. Books on art and postmodernism fall into this category and I may write about a couple I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure to experience.
First of all, read what you are interested in and pick accessible sources that are easier to comprehend. A saying sums things up quite nicely: average minds discuss people, good minds discuss events, but great minds discuss ideas! You can’t do anything without ideas other than reporting. Read and read and have a thesaurus and several dictionaries by your side. I have a medical dictionary, a Latin dictionary and a legal dictionary. I have a dictionary of proverbs, too. This is how your vocabulary and comprehension will grow and how you will come into contact with knowledge and ideas. It won’t be handed to you on a plate. Work needs to be done here, and there are no shortcuts unless you plagiarise. Not something I would recommend. You will only be cheating yourself, and you will be found out!! You might hold prejudices about yourself like I did. Believing I was less than others and not producing much evidence that spoke to the contrary left me in a state of non-progression for a very long time, and no one helped me out of that until I met Keith.
By introducing me to a whole load of writing and ideas I was interested in, I was helped to start helping myself. Keith never did the work for me but opened up a path I was brave enough to follow. I had someone to bounce ideas off and discuss things with. Choose a patient, non-patronising or condescending type of person for this. He might have rolled his eyes on the odd occasion but was approachable. I also adhere to the belief that there is no such thing as a dumb question. You are where you are, and others will think the same thing. On my second degree, I received a wonderful compliment from a Muslim student after a lecture one day that came out of the blue. She told me how grateful she was that I often asked questions and appreciated how clear and straightforward I was when I spoke. Having a pretty flat accent and a bit of courage meant she easily understood me. Our foreign students do find it difficult to understand “Scousers”, “Brummies”, and “Gordies” because the accent is just too alien to someone who doesn’t have English as their first language.
There’s a writer in everyone if you want it badly enough, but you must have something to say. You can’t write any essay without knowing something about the subject or having thoughts about it. Before becoming a writer, you become an ideas, knowledge and information gatherer. Keeping a notebook with a pencil and rubber in hand is quite useful. Jot down anything that resonates with you or a principle about something you fully understand. And this helped once I realised that when a book is your property, you can underline as much as you want to. You can scribble in the margins to highlight everything pertinent. It’s not a crime or disrespectful.
Academics and great thinkers have been doing it for eternity. Never in a million years would I have thought of doing this until I’d seen it done. Believe it or not, that was a breakthrough for me. Let me also tell you about something else I learnt after seeing it in my 30s. I was corresponding with a Hegelian/Marxist Philosopher from across the pond and he sent me an image via email of a fragment of Schelling’s work. The devil Schelling had scribbled on it and doodled the picture of a squirrel. It’s not precious until you decide it is and needs to be polished for ease of consumption. Your work is your work and should be as individual as you are.
Being mechanical and formulaic will not bring anything new, so be daring. No one has a monopoly on content unless you let them and cave in. There might be certain conventions to follow, but the content is entirely down to the author. You have complete control in this regard or ought to if the writing is to be free, authentic and originality. As Shakespeare said, “Be true to thyne own self”. We hold these published learned thinkers in such high regard at times and come to know them through pages and pages of the polished written word. These works will have gone through so many rounds of editing and proofreading before printing that I imagine they lost count, and we must never forget that. These thinkers were as fallible and human as you and I; they had to start somewhere like everyone else. We are never shown the entirety of their personalities, characters or mistakes but only the end product. We are never given the story of how they got there. The finished work is never the whole story!
I must confess that I have read Orwell’s essays and thoroughly enjoyed them. After reading “Why I Write”, I took one significant pearl of wisdom from it. If you care about your audience and wish to reach a wide one, write with as few words as possible. Don’t go overboard with long and fancy words that are unnecessary. It will dilute the message and make you look like a prick. If the idea is the most important thing, keep it simple and choose the most familiar words to describe and explain. I don’t write for academia but to impart knowledge or insight to as many people as possible. Knowing your audience and caring about them matters.
I would also recommend that you look at your beliefs and how you feel and think about things. Ask why, who, what and when as often as you can. What is your gut telling you? How does something sit with you? I remember being very attracted to what Einstein once said: “Peace cannot be created through force but through understanding”. Having respect for this genius meant it chimed, and I took it on board, applied it quite broadly, and sought to understand it before anything else. Once you comprehend you can set about good expression of it and not before. But it certainly helps to know yourself well and not be ashamed of where you are or have come from.
What I find very important is setting out your aims. This is usually crystalised in a title and should guide you. I have no exact idea about what the readership of this blog is like. I should imagine there are many history buffs or students and I can’t strictly help you with an academic historical essay other than look at your method. You will no doubt have to Harvard reference content and fulfil certain conventions to pay the correct respects to academics before you and show that you have assimilated the knowledge and worked intelligently with such material. This is academia and it has its role, but it can also serve to be like an intellectual straight jacket. You will come up against some trends in thought that are reactionary and purely fantastical, totally idealist and have very little robust theory to support them. Please remember that we live in a class society, and competing theories get censored, held back, drowned out, dragged through the mud, bastardised, deliberately misrepresented and buried.
The victors often write history, and it is extremely one-sided. Be aware of your sources and who they serve. Read far and wide to balance your views before you commit to something and take it as gospel. Don’t be loyal to ideas that do not serve your interests; you will be inauthentic and missing the bigger picture. You will be punished for not reiterating the most acceptable of ideas at times and will be marked down. This happened often to me in my first degree because I didn’t quite agree with the status quo. Sadly, this happens but it’s the world as it is and not as it should be. Completely accommodate yourself to this and you will not produce anything all that original, I guarantee that much. Whether you do this or not isn’t any of my business, but your work will have little originality and you will be just going through the motions to pass exams or make money. This satisfies some people, but it doesn’t satisfy me. I urge people to also read straight from the horse’s mouth.
Don’t read a book about Orwell. For example, read his works. Don’t read a book about Trotsky, read the works he wrote with his hand and that flowed from his thought. The same applies to anyone: William Morris, Lenin, Marx, Freud, Nietzche, Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky, Hegel, Aristotle or whoever. If you are struggling to understand them, and at times, you most certainly will go to a trusted, robust source to help walk you through it. A kind source that isn’t patronising or condescending and has the interest of empowering you rather than browbeating you. Then, you will start to grasp stuff and move forwards instead of being uncertain in your thinking. I’m sure this doesn’t happen to everyone, but it does happen nonetheless.
To summarise this contribution, I would say that writing is an art form and, essentially, like all the arts, is about expression. Skill and mastery of the conventions of this art form are a must but the content is down to you. You must have something to say and express before starting, even with limited skill. Like a painter, there must be something to paint that is yearning to find expression. Before starting, the artist sketches privately in a book and learns through exercise. Any mistakes made are hidden in this little private book. There must be mastery of mixing colours, knowing paints, an understanding of brushes, palette knives, sponges, and their mark making abilities and how to vary these at will to gain the desired effect. There must be an appreciation for composition, attention to how it looks on the page or canvas and how to manipulate and change this to make the expression of the content the best version of what it is trying to say or reveal. You may be laughed at and sneered at for your efforts, but an individual will never learn to swim if they don’t jump into the water.
Although I’m not a historian, I have certainly had to look at my own here, so perhaps I am one after all, and I say this with a wink! Whatever I have written has been done with the best of intention and I hope it urges anyone to improve and give yourself a try. This work will undoubtedly have some mistakes, but do you know what? I don’t care at this stage as it’s not an academic piece of writing ready to be published and published in print. It is simply to provoke thought from inertia into movement with momentum. I wish you well on this journey, and may your destination be a piece of work that you are proud of and that resonates with the many, not the few.
