Creative writing tutor Joanna Pocock on her new book and advice for beginners
- Written byCarys Thomas
- Published date 07 January 2026
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Award-winning writer and creative writing tutor Joanna Pocock tells us about her new book, 'Greyhound', and the story behind it.
Joanna has been teaching creative writing, both fiction and non-fiction, for two decades and brings a wealth of writing, editing and publishing experience to her classes.
'Greyhound' has received much critical praise and was recently featured in the BookBar’s September reads.
How did you first get into creative writing?
I have been writing my whole life. I have journals and notebooks that go back to when I was 8 years old, which is when I started keeping a diary (though there are long periods when I don't write in them). Some entries are just one sentence. Others are long, involved scenes.
Journals are a writer's best friend. I would advise any aspiring writers to keep a diary. They come in really handy when you want to remind yourself of details for a piece of writing, whether that's a piece of non-fiction or fiction.
But, it's also important to not feel guilty during those periods when life gets too busy, too hectic to document it. Writing for me is a sort of vocation. I do it because it helps me make sense of the world. The key, I think, is doing it until you find a voice that feels right. It can't be rushed. You just have to sort of let it emerge when it wants to.
Tell us about your new book, ‘Greyhound’.
Greyhound is in many ways the continuation of some of the explorations I made in my previous book, Surrender. In Surrender, I was training my sights on the wilder landscapes in the American West. I was looking at the inhabitants of the West who had intense relationships with those places, from rewilders and scavengers to ecosexuals and wolf trappers.
It struck me that in order to access these places, one needs to travel along highways, past giant box stores, and through suburbs and sprawl. I realised that these overlooked spaces are rarely written about as places in and of themselves. I had crossed the US on a Greyhound bus in 2006 and I started to think about this trip as a way into these spaces, as a way of looking at them as environmental hot spots, as places where social, cultural and environmental justice intersect. I decided to retrace this cross-country bus journey in 2023 to see how these places had changed and to confront the changes that had happened in my own life.
Greyhound, thus became a hybrid work of memoir, reportage, environmental writing as well as an examination of the very rich literature of the road, from Kerouac and Steinbeck to Simone de Beauvoir and Ethel Mannin. The Greyhound bus itself also came to be its own environment, its own space rich for exploration which showed a side of America people rarely see.
Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?
1. Keep a diary.
2. Take a short course as a way of dipping your toe into the practice of writing. Maybe you thought you wanted to write short stories, but after trying that, you realised you wanted to write memoir or something more experimental. Just keep trying various approaches until you find one that gives you pleasure. Short courses are great for that.
3. Try and gather fellow writers together for a regular meet-up to discuss your work, to workshop pieces of writing or even just to talk about the act and the craft of writing. There is huge strength in community.
4. Be prepared for rejections. For every acceptance of a piece of writing there are countless rejections. That is, sadly, just part of the process.
5. Read. Read. Read. And then read some more! The best way of learning to write is through reading and thinking about why you like certain writers and pieces of writing over others.
6. Stay offline as much as possible. The internet is a huge distraction. Write, if you can, with a pen and paper as a way of freeing your mind and not being distracted.
7. Don't be hard on yourself. If you give yourself writing tasks or deadlines and you don't hit them, don't give up and don't become demoralised. You'll get there when you get there...
8. Allow yourself time to daydream, to go for walks. Often the best ideas come when we switch off.
9. Did I mention reading?
10. Don't give up....
Would you like to develop your creative writing skills?
Joanna teaches a range of short courses, including creative writing for beginners, life writing and writing life, life and memoir writing and nature and environmental writing.
Learn how to get your ideas onto paper with a short course. Explore our creative writing short courses.
