Playwright Anna Chatterton has wrapped up her time at McMaster as the 2024-2025 Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer in Residence – a time that, she says, has been filled with community, growth and connections.
We chatted with her about her experience this year.
How has your year gone? It seems like only yesterday that we were welcoming you to McMaster!
It’s been wonderful to meet a community of writers — all these different souls that are interested in writing, that are passionate about writing, from all walks of life who, for whatever reason, are now putting a foot in the water and are getting a chance to write.
I’ve been very moved that people are sharing their stories with me, and eventually, potentially, the world. Because many people were writing about their own lives, I’ve been having some extremely deep conversations with people. They’re talking about very vulnerable things in their lives, and making realizations about their lives as they’re talking about their writing.
We’re always, as humans, searching for a human connection — so this has all been quite moving.
Any unexpected moments?
There have definitely been things that I didn’t expect to do! For instance, I started to meet writers who talked about how they didn’t have anyone to talk to about writing. They didn’t have a community of writers — so I actually started to matchmake!
I created an off-site writers’ group that has about 8-10 members — all folks I met who were feeling isolated and expressing a need for community. They’ve now met three or four times, and they’re ecstatic.
I feel like I set up a bunch of people for a marriage! They all come from very different walks of life, but what they have in common is a need for community and a big passion for writing.
What was your process for working with writers? Any challenges?
I’m first and foremost a playwright, so sometimes I worried that I wasn’t the best person to offer advice. Even though I’ve lived my life as a writer, and I do know my way around fiction and non-fiction, I haven’t written a novel yet, and a lot of people were coming to me with novels.
So what I ended up doing as a result was trying to identify, really early on, the experiences that were important for people as they moved forward. Did they want to get published? Did they just want to write, and have something for their family?
A lot did want to get published, so I started thinking about when I first started out — in our MFA cohort, everyone got published. Why? And how could I help people who couldn’t take an intensive creative writing program? I eventually realized that the most effective part of the MFA program was having a mentor who read our work several times and worked really closely on the entire manuscript with us.
Now, the limitation of the residency is that I could only look at 10 pages — and if people are writing a novel or a memoir or another manuscript, they need to have professional eyes on the whole thing.
I started to recommend they work with writers I know who were legit and could give feedback in an intentional, smart, direct way but do it kindly. Quite a few people have gone forward with mentors that I recommended.
What do you think are some challenges that people had to overcome in booking that first appointment with you?
Fear! People said in their initial emails that they wanted the writing to be really good before they brought it to me, so I wanted to make them comfortable, and let them know that I was here to help.
It was essential to relay to these emerging writers that it’s important to allow ourselves to write badly, that it’s part of the process. I recommend writing your first draft imperfectly and without too much editing, just to get to the end. Edits are for the third draft!
A lot of the time I was working with people who had not been treated with care when they were younger regarding their writing, so they gave up. I felt like I was there to be a cheerleader – just to instill confidence in the creative process.
It was deeply satisfying to talk so deeply about the creative process with people and really share MY vulnerabilities – how I also think my writing sucks, and how I also struggle with that.
People just need to hear that they’re on the right path, that they’re doing the right thing, and that there’s not a right or wrong way to write. Really, just writing, the act itself, is going to move you forward.
I feel like there’s a writer in everyone, and you can always find it.
