The art of writing, between gift and learning

GironaThe definitive impulse to start writing, a self-confidence therapy, the stimulus to tell that story that is kept in a corner of the soul or a creative activity for an active retirement. The students of the Vicenç Pagès Jordà Writing Room of the Girona City Council are as diverse and heterogeneous as the motivations that have led them to want to write. But all of them, despite their different origins, ages or abilities, are touched by the same passion for writing. And for reading! Since the founder of the school, the late writer from Figueres Vicenç Pagès, did not conceive of one activity without the other.

The impostor syndrome

Will I be or can I be a good writer? Am I really writing well or am I perhaps overestimating myself? Am I a fraud in the writing profession? These are questions that a good part of the students at the Writing Workshop ask themselves and that, as they admit, make it difficult for them to progress in their learning and, above all, in the writing of a work they are working on and would like to finish publishing.

This is the case of the journalist Carme Martínez. Her profession forces her to write daily, in her case, journalistic chronicles for the radio, but she assures that "a journalistic text has nothing to do with a literary text." She is always satisfied with her journalistic texts, but she has doubts about her literary ones. "Writing fiction commands great respect from me, it generates impostor syndrome, which has not disappeared after taking the course, even though I have learned a lot," explains Carme, who signed up for La Mercè's Writing Workshop in 2022 because "I had a story in my head to write, a novel based on real events, and I didn't even know where to start." Now, she already has 31 pages of that story written, but the lack of time to dedicate to it forces her to put writing aside for a while and she fears that when she picks it up again, she will only dedicate herself to rewriting and not advancing the narrative.

In the case of Ian Moreno, imposter syndrome did not affect him in his early days in the world of writing. “I have written all my life, since I was little, and when I started writing so young, the opposite of imposter syndrome happened to me: with writing I built my adolescent ego and it has been as I have acquired knowledge that I have been deconstructing that pride,” says Ian, who has studied philosophy and music production and who enrolled in La Mercè's Writing Workshop last October. “Now I have more critical spirit,” he admits. The learning in the workshop helps him to overcome imposter syndrome: “The fact of sharing our writings is very useful because you realize that there are other people who like your texts, it helps you to see when and how your message arrives, to discover that others see the bright spot or the magic of your text in a different paragraph than you imagined,” says Ian.

“I want to be a writer”

Although they are not the majority, some students are very clear that their profession is and will be that of a writer, without feeling like impostors. This is the case of Júlia Domènech, the youngest student who has passed through the Aula d'Escriptura de La Mercè, where she began the first prose itinerary when she was just under eighteen years old. "I was afraid to tell you, but I want to be a writer," Júlia admits during the interview, after other students have spoken of insecurities and impostures. "I was born to do this, I have a need to explain things, to put them on paper. I have a real passion for writing," she states.

She is studying Catalan philology and Spanish philology at the same time and also English philology subjects as an Erasmus student at a British university, where a story of hers in English has already been published in the university magazine. She has always written, since she was very young, when she won prizes at the Jocs Florals and in other literary competitions for young people. Going abroad now to do Erasmus has activated her creative streak even more: "I had always been in Girona and I lacked life experience to write. I didn't have enough material. I had to see the world! I've never written as much as I do now," she admits.

And when the course ends, the panic

In module 4, students work on a literary work project with their assigned tutor. All students appreciate this support, so much so that when it ends, they often feel orphaned and a sense of panic sets in. “Some of the students who finished module 4 last year asked to continue with the tutor, but they told us that we now had the tools to continue working on our project. Maybe they were right, but I was left with the panic, the feeling that I wouldn't manage alone, the respect for having to decide for myself whether what I was doing was good or not,” explains Carme Martínez.

Joan-Enric Barceló, who is a member of Els Amics de les Arts, did have the good fortune to have the tutor’s support once module 4 was completed. Barceló signed up for La Mercè's Writing Workshop in 2016 “essentially to meet Vicenç Pagès Jordà,” whom he considers one of the best writers of Catalan literature. At the end of the prose track, Pagès accompanied him in the writing of the collection of stories that Barceló eventually published, Morir sabent poques coses. “At the end of the four sessions of module 4, I had written the stories with a mixture of fear of disappointing the person I admired so much, I felt a bit lost, I wasn't entirely happy with the result, and I told Vicenç Pagès that I was sorry, but I felt I had wasted my time because I didn't like what I had written – admits Barceló –. And it was very nice because he offered to continue helping me and we arranged to meet periodically in Torroella de Montgrí, where he lived. It was like a teacher-student relationship that ended with a great friendship,” he recalls.  

The ordeal to publish

For Joan-Enric Barceló, publishing the work that had emerged from the La Mercè Writing Workshop was not difficult. He tried it with Periscopi, which is the publishing house where he wanted to publish, and the editor immediately opened the door for him, warning him that he would treat him “as any author”, not as a media-savvy author. “I already knew I was fighting against something that could be both good and bad: that many people would read me for being the singer of Els Amics de les Arts and that other people would refuse to read me precisely for that reason”, admits Barceló.

However, most of the students from the Writing Workshop do not have the same luck. Although he had already published a first novel in 1999, with which he was a finalist for the Premi Ciutat d’Alzira, Narcís Juanola has not had an easy time publishing a collection of short stories that he has recently written, following his enrollment in the La Mercè Writing Workshop in 2023. “I have sent it to a pile of publishing houses and most of them don't even reply, while those that do argue that short stories are not in fashion now or similar excuses”, he explains. His perseverance, however, has borne fruit and finally a publishing house from Tarragona agreed to publish his book.

La Mercè worker with award-winning bookNina Busquet, who last December published the young adult novel La cuinera de notícies, explains that she joined the workshop three years ago because she liked writing, but she had “no training to know how to structure a book”. She already had a draft written, which was initially a book of short stories, and she rewrote it with the help of her tutor, Lluís Muntada, from whom she learned above all to cut and to realize that there are necessary ellipses for the plot to advance. She ended up publishing the book with the Valencian publishing house AILA Edicions after submitting it to other publishers without receiving a response. 

The classroom, a second home

For the students, the Writing Workshop is much more than a space where they learn to write, and for many it has become their “second home”. It is the place where they share their passion for writing, where they learn from the teachers but also from the successes and mistakes of the other students, where complicity is established and friendships are created. Montse Pallarès confesses to being “totally addicted” to La Mercè's Workshop. She joined in 2018 for the prose circuit, which she repeated when she finished, and later joined the poetry one, where, as she assures, she discovered that in this genre she has best found her voice as a writer. She currently has a poetry book with a publisher interested in publishing it.

The workshop is also a second home for one of the oldest students who have attended La Mercè's courses, Maria Dolors Niell, 83 years old. Known to everyone in the workshop as “the lady from Calella”, Maria Dolors cultivates her cultural eagerness here, which she could not feed until she retired. “I have always liked to write, I wrote poems when I was little, but I couldn't study because when I was fourteen my mother died and I had to stay home to take care of my brothers and father”, she laments. She joined La Mercè because she had a story in mind to write and now she feels capable of finishing it... “I love the atmosphere of the workshop, it gives me a sense of well-being and I have made good friends there”, she assures.

For the journalist Tina Casademont, former editor of the newspaper El Punt Avui, the Writing Workshop allows her to feed the writing bug she got when she left her job at the newspaper and to compensate for the “boredom” of her current job in administration. From the Workshop, she highlights the generosity of the teachers and the warmth that is created among the students. “It is nice to learn from each other, for example by identifying our own mistakes in others. A special warmth is created in the workshop, so much so that some former students continue to meet at least once a month”, she indicates.

La Mercè worker with an award-winning book

Pep Juanola, sixty years old, a worker at the Centre Cultural La Mercè for years, decided in 2022 to take a step that, he assures, has changed his life: he enrolled as a student in the Writing Workshop, in the poetry itinerary. He did so well that on May 7th he will present his first poetry collection, Sequeres, at La Mercè, worked on in the Workshop with the guidance of tutor Roger Costa-Pau, who wrote the prologue. The work was awarded the Arimany Prize of Roda de Ter and has been published by a Valencian publishing house. “If they had told me this before I signed up for the workshop, I wouldn’t have believed it,” confesses Pep, who is already working on a new poetry book.

The big house of creative writing 

Aware of the lack of training in creative writing, with a great tradition in the Anglo-Saxon world, the writer Vicenç Pagès Jordà began to teach Saturday morning courses in Girona in the year 2000. They were the seed of the future school. Glòria Granell, director of the Vicenç Pagès Jordà Writing Room of the Girona City Council, explains that they designed the project with Pagès himself and Mita Casacuberta, a professor at the UdG, a university with which an agreement was made in the early years. "The room also covered the obvious writing deficiencies of the students, who obtained credits," explains Granell. The Writing Room was born in the 2013-2014 academic year, with Carles Puigdemont as mayor. It offered a training core of four four-month modules, a two-year itinerary, and fifteen students per class. The first module was generic, the second and third already allowed choosing prose or poetry, and the fourth was a personalized tutorial for four months to develop, for example, a novel or a poetry collection. The sixty available places in the first year were filled and many people were put on a waiting list. "We didn't expect it," admits Granell.

The foundations have not changed, explains Mar Bosch, the current head of studies at the Room. "We have only refined it," she clarifies. Now, about 270 students pass through the writing rooms of the La Mercè Cultural Center, in the old town of Girona, each year. They have created the Vicenç Pagès Memorial to commemorate the founder and soul of the Room, with lectures that are published in books, and they also organize training courses in institutes and schools, taught by the Room's professors Marta Masó and Ramon Bartrina, who during 2025, have reached 581 students.

Unlike book clubs, where women clearly dominate, the student body is balanced by gender. “Lawyers, doctors, students, retirees, high school teachers, all united by the desire to write, which creates a very powerful synergy,” highlights Granell. Jordi Dausà, one of the Aula's professors, believes that diversity ends up being interesting: “Quite experienced people mix with others who are starting out, but the commitment is that everyone will improve their level. You already know who you can push, because you see they are good.” Mar Bosch adds: “It's like in rural schools, where some learn from the difficulties of others.” Following Vicenç Pagès's spirit, they seek a profile of good writer-teachers, humble and dedicated, who make students shine. Mar Bosch alludes to “a sensitivity and ability to deal with students, an emotional fit, since many people use writing as therapy.” Among the teachers are Francesc Miralles, Adrià Pujol, Lluís Muntada, Melcior Comas, Anna Ballbona, Roger Costa-Pau, Rosa Font or Mercè Cuartiella, among others.

Dausà is very aware that, for better or worse, everyone leaves very personal imprints: “I remember a class where a girl poured out emotions and very tough things into a text and, upon receiving too harsh criticism, she fell down flat.” The teachers let the students comment on each other's texts, but they admit that they always do so with great respect and rarely need to act as moderators. Cristina Garcia Molina, also a teacher at the Aula, explains that the experience of book clubs is very useful to her, where readers sometimes tell the author that they did not like their book at all. “I have never experienced an unpleasant comment towards anyone,” she highlights. 

Garcia, who went to a writing school, assures that “these places often give you the courage you need”. And he adds: “If someone hadn’t told me ‘go ahead!’, perhaps I wouldn’t have published”. However, he also admits that if your experience begins in a writing school, with a network and support, “when all this ends, it is a difficult time”. Precisely, to maintain the link, the Writing Club for former students has been created, who meet once a month. Specific training capsules are also scheduled, open to everyone, where topics such as setting, character description, or endings are discussed.