Reading & Writing-Science Fiction & Fantasy

Reading & Writing-Science Fiction & Fantasy

Can writing be taught? At least at the most basic level of literacy, that of technical competency, the answer is definitely affirmative. Teaching reading and writing is the main business of every society’s schools. How well they actually do it is open to debate, but most people seem to acquire the fundamental rudiments.

Beyond the fundamentals, and especially if we’re talking about creative writing, we enter into the realm of controversy. Perhaps this controversy is as old as writing itself. Perhaps Babylonian scribes argued about this very topic as they pressed their cuneiform script into moist bricks of clay.

There seem to be two basic schools of thought. Some say that every creative writer is basically on his or her own. Creative writing can’t be taught, but it can be learned. And the young would-be creative writer learns the craft by reading a lot, writing a lot, and reading and writing a lot more. After the would-be writer has written perhaps a million words, he or she has probably learned to write at the professional level.

The other school of thought agrees that the young would-be creative writer has to read and write a lot. But it also argues that some aspects of the craft can be taught, thus shortening the arduous path to proficiency.

Practitioners in the field of science fiction and fantasy seem to be in the latter camp. Perhaps this is another aspect of the passionate love affair such aficionados have with their literature. Even in the Thirties, members of groups like the Futurians were mentoring each other on an individual basis in the finer facets of fiction writing. And one of those Futurians, Damon Knight, not only went on to a distinguished career as a fiction writer , but also to an influential career as a critic of the field.

And Damon Knight was also one of the founders in 1956, along with Judith Merril and James Blish, of the annual Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference. This was a series of workshops, open only to professional writers, held over eight summer weeks in Milford, Pennsylvania. The purpose was to give professional writers a chance to talk shop and critique each other’s work-in-progress. Other regulars at Milford over the years included Harlan Ellison, Terry Carr, Robert Silverberg, Samuel R. Delany and Kate Wilhelm.

Milford lasted until 1972, the same year that co-founder James Blish moved to Great Britain and, with his wife, founded UK Milford, which continued the tradition overseas. Christopher Priest, Mary Gentle, and Diana Wynne Jones were some of the regulars at UK Milford in the early years.

Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm were also instrumental in the 1968 founding of the Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop at Clarion State College, north of Pittsburgh. Now resident at Michigan State University, the Clarion Workshop has produced a noted number of alumni, including Kim Stanley Robinson, Lisa Tuttle, Vonda McIntyre, Ed Bryant, Octavia Butler, and many others.

From the beginning, the mentors at Milford and Clarion went above and beyond in their assistance to their younger colleagues. For example, Harlan Ellison financially supported Octavia Butler out of his own pocket in her early years. He also paid her way to, and tuition for, Clarion in 1970, even though Butler had sold nothing at the time. And, not only did the SF community at Clarion embrace her, but that crucial support was her breakthrough, as Butler was able to sell her very first story the next year, 1971.

In addition to encouraging novice black genre writers such as Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, the pro writers at Clarion and Milford were also notably welcoming toward beginning female authors. The experience of Kate Wilhelm was typical. In the summer of 1959, not even three years after her debut in the science fiction magazines, she was invited to attend Milford. And there, Wilhelm said in her memoir, Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, she experienced something she had never before experienced. Male writers, professionals such as Blish and Knight (whom she did not yet know), “treated me and my work seriously in a way no one had done previously.” While such respect and acceptance was unknown to Wilhelm outside the science fiction world, it was the norm inside the science fiction world.

Kate Wilhelm, and so many other graduates of Milford and Clarion, went on to outstanding careers in the field. Their success has given substance to the field’s belief that creative writing, can, indeed, be taught.