Ana Belén Marín (Barcelona, ??1985) has been living in a cloud for a few months. She debuted in fiction in April and her book, Give Memories (Baker Street), with which she claims the story of her grandmother, is now in its fourth edition. She never imagined that she would experience something similar, especially with a newborn baby. Her motherhood came while she was writing, which led her to consider whether or not she should stop for an unlimited period of time her classes at the Escola d’ Escriptura del Ateneu Barcelonès, the most important in Catalonia with a thousand students. . But then the pandemic and virtuality arrived.
“Taking lessons from home turned out to be an advantage for me for personal, practical and logistical reasons. At first I had doubts if it was going to work, since I was not going to see my classmates and my teacher except on the screen. But I ended up realizing that the complicity that is created with the group does not depend only on seeing each other every week, but is also possible by providing very sincere opinions after reading each other’s texts,” Marín reflects.
The editor Rosa María Prats was her teacher and remembers well the express courses she had to take to adapt to the new normal, which was here to stay, since since then videoconferences have been part of the school’s methodology and allow the same group to face-to-face and virtual students coexist, something that until covid had not even been considered, since they were two separate itineraries. “Students usually follow classes from home, but sometimes also from an airport or even a hospital,” she explains.
The faculty does not believe that virtuality and new technologies prevent the correct functioning of classes. In fact, Pau Pérez, director of the center, remembers that the actress Carme Serna (Palma, 1981) won the Mercè Rodoreda award in December with her first book, Perdona’m per desitjar-ho tant (Proa), created in the virtual circuit from the school itself. “Of the last five editions of this award, four have been won by school students.” He refers, in addition to the interpreter, to Carlota Gurt, Anna Gas and Marc Vintró, who, for the most part, also became fond of online.
Jordi Solé (Sabadell, 1966) also went there many years ago, who won the Prudenci Bertrana in September with L’any que vaig esteem Ava Gardner (Columna), which places the actress on the Costa Brava in the 1950s. Solé now directs, together with Xavier Vidal and Montse García, his own writing school, Escriptorium Sabadell, which already had classes in a mixed format before covid changed the rules of the game. Despite everything, he assures that “I am a firm defender of presence. The virtual and technological advantages are obvious, but experience tells me that people prefer in-person treatment. Classes are not only a way of learning, but they are also a time to disconnect from other things.”
Of course, remember that writing –whether or not for leisure– is something that must be taken seriously, which is why “from day one I warn my students that they are wrong if they think that they are all going to leave here with a best seller.” in hand”, although he recognizes that there are several who, “with time and effort, manage to advance a career and even win literary awards.”
He’s not just saying it for himself. He prefers to highlight some of his students, such as Adrià Aguacil (Sabadell, 2000), who won the Ciutat de Badalona Youth Fiction Award in 2020 for La botiga de vides (Animallibres), in which the protagonist, who hates her life, He asks if it is possible to buy a new one and start from scratch. The novel was later nominated for the Llibreter 2021 award, in the category of Children’s and Young People’s Literature in Catalan. Two pieces of news that the school received like rain in those very complicated times.
If a twenty-year-old young man like Aguacil, trained precisely in a writing school, had won an award of this renown a few decades ago, many would not have believed it. Antonio Rómar, deputy director of the Fuentetaja school, present in twenty cities, remembers that “when the center opened forty years ago in Madrid, there were several writers who were suspicious that a writing methodology was agreed upon and taught to the students. Imagine if they knew that they would also have the possibility to do it from home. They believed that to be a writer it was necessary to have an innate talent and that, therefore, taking notes was of little use. We strive to change this vision and to demonstrate that it is possible to learn to write, regardless of the environment you come from. Our focus from the beginning has been popularization, since a few decades ago the few formations that could exist were intended for the elites. In this sense, opening the focus to virtuality with more courses than we had before the pandemic and expanding it to mixed training – in-person and virtual – in some specific classes is a good thing.”
Looking back, Rómar realizes how much things have changed. Not only in the technological aspect, but in how the learning centers themselves are seen today, in general terms. “Many writers are now teachers because they have seen teaching as a source of extra income. Plus, it makes all the sense in the world because who better than them is going to teach you how to write and put ideas on paper?”
There are several writers who have come out of there who sometimes give workshops, such as Florencia del Campo, Marta Gordo or Elisa Ferrer, winner of the Tusquets novel prize. “Virtuality allows many writers who previously did not commit to being teachers for an entire course in case they are on tour, now do so because, if that happens, they can continue teaching from their own computer.”
In Barcelona, ??she also combines her role as writer and teacher, although she prefers face-to-face teaching, Care Santos (Mataró, 1970), which shows that it is not necessary to depend on a writing school to teach the profession. “She teaches several courses through the cultural digital medium Catorze. But, beyond those sessions and those I can do in libraries or town halls, I have private workshops, although I don’t publicize them much because they always fill up. They are people I have met before who ask me for workshops. Some have even signed up for as many as thirteen, and I often tell them that the day will soon come when they will be able to teach me more than the other way around. I try to be one more, so I also do the homework I set.”
Santos never went to writing school. “I wish, because when I was a teenager I would have gone crazy.” She wishes she could do it now, although she admits that much of the offering is aimed at beginning writers. “I miss a kind of continuous training for those of us who already have published work, although I recognize that we are a union that generally does not like having our ego touched.”
Roser Cabré-Verdiell (Barcelona, ??1982) did decide to attend the Escola Bloom in Barcelona and a summer course in Iowa after publishing her first stories, as did – although in a different center – Gemma Sardà, Leticia Asenjo, Elisenda Solsona and Laura Tejada, a group known as the Autòctones and of which she is also a part. The author of Aioua (Males Herbes) explains that she does not believe too much in the single methodology, but that she “is good to have knowledge to learn to ignore it.” Therefore, he believes that all training, whether virtual or not, is welcome and that, indirectly, it can teach you to write better, although “for that you must have a base, which is reading, in addition to a creative concern, which is the one that will allow you to grow.”