Zoran Živković offered his students an opportunity to remain anonymous and grade his creative writing course, either on a scale of 5 to 10 or by describing their class experience in words. One of his students wrote the following that Zoran used for the title of his book: "Dear Professor, at the beginning of your course I felt like an unshaped clay writer. Now I have shape. Thank you so much."
The Serbian author and teacher has had a lifetime of experience with books, beginning when his mother read to him daily at the age of three, moving on to reading books himself as an eight-year old, receiving an MA and Ph.D. in comparative literature, editor and publisher, producing over three hundred volumes, quitting editing to become an author and, over the course of three decades, writing thirty books (twenty-two fiction and eight non-fiction) and finally taking on the role of Professor at the University of Belgrade, teaching creative writing for ten years until his retirement in 2017.
And the most important lesson for any student wishing to become a writer of literature? Zoran is emphatic on this point: "There is only one fundamental requirement: to read unceasingly and insatiably. It is principally through reading that a writer is shaped." Indeed, he goes on to elaborate, "If one doesn't read what truly is the best of world literature, then one simply cannot expect to become a good writer. . . There is no better, more complete, or useful course in the creative writing of literary prose than that of the creative reading of literary prose."
British novelist Ian McEwan has made it a practice to devote a portion of his afternoons to reading literature
A lifelong reader of books, Russian author Leo Tolstoy
Additionally, Zoran shares three other important points with his students:
-Even the highest grade in his creative writing course does not make one a writer; rather, one does not become an accomplished writer of literary prose until the age of fifty. Of course, there are rare exceptions - Zoran notes Anton Chekhov and we can think of Zadie Smith or Jay McInerney, but the point is a solid one: the writing of serious prose literature is a lifetime commitment, requiring years of practice and dedication to craft before one can even begin to think of having one's work appear on the same shelf with the likes of Günter Grass, Virginia Wolf, Graham Greene or Milorad Pavić.
-In Serbia, there has never been a woman or man who made their living by writing literary prose and probably will never be. In other words, his course in creative writing is not going to directly impact a student's professional life; in order to put bread on the table and pay the bills, one will have to look elsewhere. A hard lesson, but a necessary lesson nonetheless: future efforts in reading and writing will have to be in addition to a working life. Not an easy road but that's simply the way it is.
-As a creative writing teacher, he can not make anyone a writer. Similar to other arts like music or dancing or painting, no matter how effective the imparting of techniques, without the inner spark of inspiration and inborn talent, no amount of teaching will "make" one into a writer of literary prose. Actually, with prose the dynamic is more subtle - unlike something like playing an instrument or singing, the capacity to write literary prose might be lying dormant in embryonic form and not come out until years later in life. Recognizing this reality, Zoran notes none of his students ever felt insulted, no matter how poor their writing.
One of the more lively sections of The Clay Writer is where Zoran goes on to define "creative writing" as opposed to what we generally picture as "airport novels," those books written to entertain with enough subjects to catch anybody's interest: detective novels, zombie novels, teenage lover novels, lawyer novels, cowboy novels, espionage novels, religious novels. No, no, no! Literary prose is not entertainment nor a book to cash in on a hot subject; rather, "the writing of literary prose lies at the very peak of artistic creation." Anybody who has done a careful reading of Thomas Mann or Vladimir Nabokov or Christa Wolf will be able to recognize artistic creation when they see it.
The next section turns to the teaching of creative writing. We may ask: Who are a vast majority of such teachers in universities, particularly American universities? As it turns out, not writers but English professors who specialize in understanding literary prose as scholars and academics - hardly the appropriate teachers for a student interested in becoming not a scholar but a serious literary prose artist.
As a modest counter to scholarly instruction, Zoran includes a number of cases where Vladan Matijević, an established Serbian author, speaks to the circumstances revolving around writing several of his books: "When I wrote the short novel Out of Control, I was forced to walk frantically around the room from wall to wall, and to write standing up. R. C. Inevitable I wrote at night. The stories from the book Fairly Dead I wrote lying down, mostly at night. The Writer from Afar I wrote by locking myself up in a country house, exhausting myself day and night." Of course, we must recognize, as Zoran puts it, "The circumstances for writing are only as significant as the work which they produce is good. There ar no generally accepted special circumstances for writing which will guarantee the creation of a good work."
In the most detailed section of The Clay Writer, Zoran Živković delves into his specific approaches with students in their exploration of the process of creative writing, including six topics where students are required to submit their sample writing. By way of illustrating the approach to each of the topics, Zoran provided his students with chapters from his own published books (all six are included in The Clay Writer). As to my own overarching observation on Zoran's class, I can think of no better expression than a famous Pablo Picasso quote: “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
If you are interested in becoming a writer or would like to simply learn what it takes, this is a book I highly recommend.
Serbian author Zoran Živković, born 1948
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