Category Archives: Writing Courses

Reading as a writer. Writing as a reader. And the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021

Last week a friend of mine and I talked about the six books shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. We’ve done it before and it’s always illuminating (and fun) but because we both write fiction, our conversations are often … Continue reading

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Janet Clare on getting published later on, and Vice’s Broadly.

I’ve been meaning to read this article by an older writer about starting to write later in life and how, after a very long writing journey and the discovery that every writer makes at some point, that all writing is … Continue reading

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Jericho Writers’ Self-Editing Your Novel Course, and the wonders of Atlas Obscura: destinations, food and drink

I’m in the final week of Jericho Writers’ Self-Editing your novel course run by Debi Alper and Emma Darwin and all I can say is if you’ve written a first (or even a twenty-first) draft of a novel and you know something’s … Continue reading

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For the Love of Life in COLLAGES, the Man Booker shortlist and a glorious goat gouda

In my post in July I wrote about the September publication of COLLAGES, a collection of new writing by students on Maggie Hamand’s wonderful CCWC courses. Maggie has kindly included an extract from my third novel, a work in progress … Continue reading

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CCWC, Collages and the Peirene Press

Maggie Hamand who runs the Complete Creative Writing Courses, and the Treehouse Press, have collected and edited twenty-one stories from students on Maggie’s courses. The stories will be published under the title COLLAGES in September and I’m thrilled that a … Continue reading

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Jacob Ross (and TLC)’s three-part master class, and campanology

Jacob Ross is running a three-part master class in writing the short story, the novel and genre fiction for the wonderful TLC (without whose wise criticism I doubt Speaking of Love would ever have found a publisher). The short story part … Continue reading

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Breaking writing rules, and an extraordinary National Trust house

On Tuesday, at the last CCWC Advanced Writing Course of the spring term (where, by the way, is spring?) we broke the rules and found that, in breaking them, a freedom and spontaneous playfulness broke into our writing. If, for … Continue reading

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Free indirect style, and the CCWC

I’ve struggled to understand free indirect style, let alone how to use it in fiction. But in James Wood’s brilliant How Fiction Works all is made wondrously clear through his lucid prose. As he writes, on page 11: Thanks to free … Continue reading

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