Literature, as a broad topic for discussion, is something that may always remain open-ended. After involving myself in literary studies for more than fifteen years now, I could seldom speak with conviction about what literature is and what it is not! No, it is not that I do not understand the generic version or the oft-recorded responses. It is that I fully appreciate how wearying this conundrum might be. Well, fortunately, I am not writing today to conjecture and conjure a definite definition of literature! I am writing to share my experiences attending a ‘workshop’ that read “How to Write Literature”. For some reason, it was an amusing choice of words!
I found myself sitting in that workshop, observing carefully how literary creation was being packaged and delivered, almost like a product. Rules were laid out, dos and don’ts were imposed, and participants were expected to nod along to this choreography of creativity. The very phrase “how to write literature” struck me as inherently contradictory. One may teach rules of grammar, figures of speech, or the mechanics of narrative structure, but how can one presume to teach literature itself?
Yes, creative writing may or may not be spontaneous for many people. It does require attention to detail, regular practice, and, consequently, guidance from an expert through training or lessons. As long as one teaches how to write, it is fine. However, if one starts dictating (I am unable to find a better word) what to write, for whom to write, how intense should be the writing, and many other details that should strictly be between an author and his conscious, things might become clumsy and literature might, eventually, descend into the narrow lanes of organised propaganda, political proxy or even an intellectual warfare against the people portrayed as the antagonists in such works.
This is the danger of confusing pedagogy with prescription. In my years of teaching and writing, I have seen countless instances where institutionalised workshops and courses, instead of liberating the imagination, constrain it within narrow corridors. They forget that art cannot be engineered like an architectural design, where every measurement is predetermined. A poem is not a building; it is a living expression of the poet’s soul. A novel is not a mechanical product; it is a world created by the writer’s consciousness, shaped by the personal and the universal at once.
One can teach how to put words together to create rhythm, generate sonorous lyrical impact, or even apply a better flow of verse. However, how will a teacher teach the soul, from where creativity of the best kind germinates, to think, to feel, to create, to bear, to reason, to observe not only with eyes wide open, but also with eyes closed and lulled into the pregnant darkness of the cosmic kind, hiding the divine diction of the universe?
This question lies at the centre of literary creation. What workshop can instruct one to suffer heartbreak, to gaze at the stars with awe, to struggle with existential doubt, or to find transcendence in silence? When Kalidasa imagined Meghadūta, he was not following a formula. He was expressing an inner anguish, the pain of separation, and transmuting that deeply personal experience into universal beauty. When Homer sang of Achilles’ wrath or Vyasa composed the Bhagavad Gita’s divine dialogue, they were not guided by handbooks but by vision, experience, and inspiration. The creative process emerges from this inexplicable union of perception and imagination, not from rigid classroom exercises.
The flow of literary waves, the creative energy, the imaginative verse, the storytelling mind, and the pursuer of literature himself can surely benefit from some guidance or a mutually helpful group. However, the path of literary longing often leads to solitude! If one wants to put permanent words on the white pages of the world’s history, it can only be done by virtue of being in tune with the inner self. Infinite hours of training and memorising mutually rhyming words cannot help a person with no internal spark compose poetry beyond mediocre merit, often touted by others who are also indulged in the same relentless journey, with the leader walking last.
Indeed, solitude has been the crucible of many timeless works. Milton, in blindness, dictated Paradise Lost not from manuals but from the furnace of his faith and despair. Tagore’s Gitanjali emerged from the contemplative solitude of Santiniketan, not from systematic literary lessons. Emily Dickinson, who published so little in her lifetime, wrote thousands of poems in seclusion, never needing a classroom to validate her voice. The point is simple: instruction can polish technique, but it cannot ignite vision.
To reduce creativity to a formula is to mistake the branches for the root. The branches may be pruned and trained, but the root must grow in its own direction, nourished by unseen forces of soil and water. Similarly, the soul of literature thrives on inner nourishment, fuelled by experiences, emotions, reflections, faith, doubt, and imagination—that cannot be planted from outside. To imagine otherwise is to believe that genius can be manufactured, which history has repeatedly disproved.
In fact, whenever literature has been dictated, it has often become propaganda. The regimes of the twentieth century, whether fascist or communist, produced an abundance of literature that was carefully choreographed to serve their ideologies. Yet, very little of it survived as art. The works that endure, Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago or Orwell’s 1984, did not come from obedience to dogma but from the courage to write against it. Literature survives when it is free; it dies when it is controlled.
Workshops and institutions today risk repeating this error, albeit in subtler forms. They sometimes push agendas under the guise of creativity. They may reward conformity rather than originality. They may measure success by publication count, marketability, or alignment with fashionable themes rather than authenticity. But the true writer must resist. The true writer knows that inspiration cannot be scheduled, and vision cannot be borrowed.
This is not to say that discipline and mentorship are irrelevant. A poet must read widely, practice regularly, and refine expression. A novelist benefits from discussions about narrative strategies and character arcs. But all of this remains secondary to the essential spark within. Without that spark, practice produces only hollow echoes. With that spark, even a limited technique can create greatness. Valmiki’s spontaneous shloka, born of grief upon seeing the bird slain, became the seed of the Ramayana. That moment of pure feeling, not any systematic training, was the true genesis of one of the world’s greatest epics.
As someone who has spent more than a decade reading, writing, and teaching literature, I can say with conviction that the role of a teacher or mentor is not to dictate creativity but to create the conditions where it can flourish. I can encourage my students to observe more keenly, to read more attentively, to question more courageously. I can guide them toward tools and traditions. But what they finally write must come from their own encounter with life, their own solitude, their own inner cosmos. Anything less would be imitation, not creation.
I often recall that when Bharata composed the Natyashastra, he did not provide rigid instructions on what plays must be written. Instead, he offered principles of rasa, gesture, and performance that writers and performers could interpret freely. That is the right model of teaching literature: offering frameworks that liberate, not formulas that confine.
The modern academic environment sometimes forgets this. In its obsession with assessment, grading, and outcomes, it risks strangling the very imagination it claims to nurture. I have seen students become anxious not about what they feel or wish to express, but about whether their expression fits the rubric. This anxiety kills creativity faster than ignorance ever could. For literature to thrive, classrooms must become spaces of exploration rather than examination.
Creativity cannot be dictated because it is not merely a skill; it is a way of being. It demands sensitivity to life, openness to experience, and courage to express. No manual can teach a poet to hear the silence between words, to taste the melancholy in a fading evening, or to feel the infinity in a drop of rain. These are the lessons of solitude, not syllabi.
Therefore, let workshops continue to teach craft, but let them not presume to teach literature itself. Literature belongs to the soul. It belongs to those who, in solitude or in company, learn to listen to the whispers of the universe and translate them into words. And for that, no classroom, no manual, and no formula will ever suffice.
Dr Alok Mishra
for Indian Book Critics
(Dr Alok Mishra is a contemporary poet, author of four books, a literary critic and the founder of many successful literary platforms freeing literature from the shackles of paywalls, including English Literature Education, English Literature Forum, and The Indian Authors.)
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