London Writing Workshops offers half-price courses for EssentialWriters.com members
Creating Characters
A couple of years ago, I was walking through a Bloomsbury park with a novelist friend, Kathy Page, bemoaning the increasing burden of marking and admin on university lecturers. Both Kathy and I have many years’ experience of teaching creative writing - my own CV includes Birkbeck, The Open University, South Bank University and the Arvon Foundation, as well as freelance editing and work for The Literary Consultancy.
We both enjoy the actual teaching and we have skills and insights to share. But we hate the marking. Suddenly the solution seemed to be staring us in the face: why not set something up on our own? What was stopping us? Nothing!
After some deep breaths for courage, some help from my brother in designing a website, and quite a lot of work later, London Writing Workshops was born: an ongoing series of independently run workshops, with a strong grounding in the technical, craft side of writing, as well as a commitment to inspiration, openness and enjoyment - and not a percentage mark in sight.
The beginning of London Writing Workshops
Kathy and I co-taught the first workshop, ‘Creating Characters’, in May 2008. Since then she and I have collaborated on another three days and I’ve taught nine other courses on my own.
With an average group size of eight, more than 80 people have participated in these workshops to date, many coming back more than once. I know from e-mails and conversations that quite a few have used the workshops to muster the confidence to start writing seriously after a lifetime of thinking about it.
Others have found the days helped them get over a block, or provided tips about where to publish short fiction: several people have broken into print for the first time; one has been short-listed for the Bridport Prize and another person has been taken on by a literary agent who is now sending her novel out to editors.
Kathy Page lives in Canada these days, where she published her seventh novel The Find on May 10th, but we will continue to teach together whenever she’s in the UK.
New collaborations
I’m exploring other collaborations, too: on July 17th, I’ll be teaching a day on characterisation with the comedian, novelist and short-story writer Alexei Sayle, in advance of our (sold-out) week at the Arvon Foundation’s Lumb Bank Centre in September.
Before that I’m running a couple of solo workshops in central London: The Writers’ Workout on May 22nd and Writing Short Stories on June 26th, both days running from 10.30am till 4pm.
Opportunity for members of EssentialWriters.com
To celebrate the fact that the Writers’ Workout falls almost exactly on the two-year anniversary of the very first workshop, I’d like to offer two half price places (£35) for that workshop to members of EssentialWriters.com.
The first two people to email me at Londonwritingworkshops@googlemail.com quoting ‘Essential Writers’ in their message will get the slots.
All workshops include tea, coffee and a sandwich lunch.
More information about London Writing Workshops can be found on http://londonwritingworkshops.com
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