It was a mid-day, hour long session. Along with myself 6 other people were on it (four were retired) and all were at different stages in there writing. One guy was completely new to writing and just fancied having a go (he was actually very good) and one elderly lady dropped out after week 2 and never returned. Two members of the group had been on numerous writing courses and admitted to only writing when on a course.

Having always taken my writing seriously I wasn’t sure what to expect but the assignments set our by Alison were first class and covered a lot of levels that both the occasional and more frequent writer could learn from.

Before going in to the course I had never dared to write in the first person or tried writing short stories but by the end of the 5 weeks my writing style and confidence had improved so much that I now prefer to use the first person narrative and have written 10 or so short pieces.

Cost wise I would have paid a lot more than what it actually cost as Alison’s teaching and advice was so good.

And what else did I get out of it? Well I have since been accepted onto a 2 year MA creative writing course despite not having any formal qualifications (my writing sample and a reference from Alison Moore being good enough for the University) so at the age of 37 I am finally doing something that I have wanted to do for a long time…writing and meeting likeminded others.

My sister is a proofreader, and she says the ones she likes working on least are not those that have mistakes in every paragraph, but the nothing-wrong-with-it-it’s-just-not-very-good ones. I went to a talk given by a few literary agents a while back, and when someone stood up and asked if they thought such courses were worth attending, they all groaned and laughed, and one said you can always tell the creative writing course submissions, because they tick all the boxes but are usually as dreary as hell. Formulaic. But that was only the few who were there, of course! (btw, if your blog is partly as an advert for courses you run, I will totally understand if you delete this comment).

Zadia Smith said “you can either write good sentences or you can’t.” I agree with that, but I get that not everyone does. And, after all, one of my favourite writers, John Boyne, did a creative writing degree to hone his skills. So I can see both sides!

Interesting point, Terry, but what would you class as ‘a gift for the written word’? What makes a good story, compelling characters, and well-written prose is subjective. There are certain things that can be graded – like how clearly points are communicated, avoiding cliches, and three-dimensional characters – but you don’t learn how to do those things without practise. It’s a lot easier to tell if someone is tone deaf because you can tell if they’re hitting the write notes, but the technicalities of writing are far more subtle.