A newsletter from Falmouth University College’s Professional Writing MA wends its way to us. It raises an interesting question: if you’re a hedge fund manager, can you transfer the skills you’ve acquired into professional writing?
Falmouth’s Professional Writing MA has recently seen a rise in applications from the professional sector, as accountants, company directors and corporate lawyers seek to escape the City, harness their inner muse and write for a living. Boyd Tonkin, the Independent’s softly spoken yet acerbic literary critic, was cynical about this development. “Writing – fine,” he said. “For a living – in your dreams, hedgies.”
Christina Bunce, who heads the MA course, was forthright in her rejection of this view. “What Tonkin failed to recognise is that the MA – unlike many creative writing courses – does not aim to help students produce slabs of navelgazing fiction, but focuses on commercially viable forms as well as teaching a range of skills that are highly transferable to other areas,” she said. “From our students’ point of view, the key to making a living from writing is flexibility. You may well have a wonderful literary novel in development, but it makes sense to make money from your craft in other ways until you get that killer advance: copywriting, public relations, writing for the web or magazine and newspaper journalism.”
Bunce added that “Writing courses have come in for a lot of stick from critics who say they are a waste of time. But the evidence of our graduates suggests that there is a growing awareness in the business world – from banks to telecoms companies – that strong, practically focused writing skills make for good business outcomes.”
Who’s right – Tonkin or Bunce? Anecdotal evidence suggests that the recession has made being a freelance writer harder than ever, and yet Tonkin, in also saying that even established writers struggle to equal the national average wage, is wrong. Successful writers make a good living, but no doubt Bunce and her colleagues make it very clear to their students that this will never be within reach unless they are prepared to work very, very, hard – and to accept that at the outset of their careers, they will be engaging in loss leader work.
Which means that a wealthy hedge fund manager, wishing to carve out a new life, might just be ideally set for professional writing.
Image courtesy of Chaparal (Kendra) on Creative Commons.
