Last week saw the final event in the Institute of Creative and Critical Writing programme for the 2012-13. The summer will bring notice of the programme for 2013-14 – which I can already promise will be filled with good things.

This is a good moment, however, to look back on the ICCW’s first season.

For those readers who may not know, the ICCW exists to cultivate the literary arts and the life of ideas, through its calendar of public events. Six events a year are run on-campus at Birmingham City University, and feed directly into our creative writing programmes there at both postgraduate and undergraduate level. Other events are based off-campus, usually (but not exclusively) at city centre venues in Birmingham.

The ICCW has a core group of contributors, known as Fellows of the ICCW, who contribute to its aims and its programme, through readings, masterclasses, and in some cases, tutorial roles. Our Fellows are: Helen Cross, Caroline Jester, Ian Marchant, Patrick McGuinness, David Morley, and Sally Read. You can learn more about them, and the ICCW, by following the links on this blog.

So – the 2012-13 programme looked like this:

17 October 2012: Poet, novelist and Fellow of the ICCW, Patrick McGuinness, on writing the prize-winning novel The Last Hundred Days – and its relationship to his poetry

14 November 2012: Literary agent Ben Mason, of Fox Mason, on working with agents, and the challenges of the twenty-first century literary marketplace

21 November 2012: Poet and critic David Morley, reading his work – including his forthcoming book, The Gypsy and the Poet – and discussing his practice as a poet

28 November 2012: Digital publishing company Autharium, on the opportunities of the digital marketplace

6 February 2013: Alan Mahar, novelist and former Chief Executive of Tindal Street Press, lecture on the past, present, and future of literary fiction

13 February 2013: Jonathan Davidson, poet and Director of Writing West Midlands, on sustaining a career as a writer

22 February 2013: The ICCW sponsors the Writers in Schools event, by Writing West Midlands and the National Association of Writers in Education

13 March 2013: Poets and publishers Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving, on running Fuselit, Sidekick Books, and reading from their own and others’ poetry

2 April 2013: The ICCW sponsors the inaugural John Donne Day at Polesworth Abbey

17 April 2013: The ICCW launch event, attended by over 120 people, at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, with readings from Fellows David Morley, Patrick McGuinness, Caroline Jester, me (on behalf of Sally Read), Helen Cross, and Ian Marchant. (Photos to appear here soon…)

24 April 2013: Novelist Jenn Ashworth, reading from her work - including her latest book, The Friday Gospels – and discussing her writing practice.

I think anyone would be delighted to have curated this programme, and I know I certainly am.

Watch this space for new of the 2013-14 programme soon.

Dr Gregory Leadbetter, Director of the Institute of Creative and Critical Writing

Why do writers write? Because they read, of course – not only books, but the world around them – and they cannot quite leave it at that.

All writers enquire into the origins of their way of life, at some point in their career – and most often the trail leads back to some encounter with words in youth or childhood, and an imaginative experience of transformative intensity. Something is read, in the word or the world, and the impulse to answer in a language of your own is woken. An impulse to describe, to make known, to perform, and to realise.

Every writer carries their own creation story around with them – and each one will be as different as one person is from the next. No matter how they get there, however, the essentials will have taken root: reading for pleasure, and the practice of writing.

It’s a truism that writers must read, and writers must write. Imagine a musician who didn’t listen to music, or practise their instrument. Becoming a writer – as opposed to someone who writes purely at leisure – means integrating these essential processes into your life, and (at some level, at least) dedicating yourself to them.

I’m thinking here of those who would wish to be known as writers – who wish, in other words, for others to know their work. Writing for publication is twofold in nature: it still has an experiential significance for you, as the writer – but (if you’re doing your job) it also travels beyond yourself, carrying the potential to have some operative effect upon your readers, too. That focus – on the potential in the writing, for others to experience – is a distinguishing mark of the dedicated writer.

Writers are also perpetual students. Finding the time, space, and sound advice to develop your practice can be particularly crucial at the early stages, when you might still be learning how to learn. As well as reading and writing on your own, this is where creative writing classes and courses of the kind now offered by universities across the country, and organisations such as Arvon and the Poetry School, can be most useful. Indeed, if they’re any good, these courses will have an inherent value, whether or not you carry on writing afterwards.

Publication remains the key to earning a living as a writer – not necessarily because it will bring six-figure advances, but because it is through publication that the writer finds an audience, makes connexions, and participates in the culture on something like their own terms.

The process of connexion is vital to any writer. Get to know your local and national literature development agencies, for starters: we are particularly well served in the heart of England by Writing West Midlands. One thing really does lead to another in the writing life: most writers supplement publication income through commissions, public speaking, teaching, and other projects. These things come about through meeting people, and through your credentials as a writer. Once the doors open, the task is to get on with it – and to keep in touch with all of the processes you know, by now, that you’re writing depends on.

If I had to conceive an idea of the writer for the twenty-first century – whatever form they work in – it would be as a roving, independent cultural agent in the world: a maker of substance in words. The way is yours to find. As Goethe’s Mephistopheles says: there is no path. It is untrodden.