Have you ever thought your own life experience or someone else’s (a family member’s, perhaps?) might make good reading?
Have you ever said about a life experience – yours or someone else’s – ‘honestly, you couldn’t make it up’?
On this weekend course, you will consider the raw material life delivers us for our writing, exploring how best to organise and shape this raw material to make it readable. You will apply literary techniques that will help render our lived experience interesting and exciting for a reader. You will also consider what ethical issues arise when writing from life.
Together with the tutor and your peers, you will read and discuss extracts from texts others have produced about their lives, including work by authors such as Rachel Cusk, Audre Lorde, Marcel Proust, James Baldwin and Karl Ove Knausgaard.
Learn to work with objects and archive materials such as diaries and letters, as well as paying attention to the writer’s body, memory and imagination.
There will be opportunities for in-session writing and opportunities to share your work and get feedback from your tutor and your fellow writers.
By the end of this course, you will have a clear understanding of what aspects of your story are of the most interest to potential readers and you will appreciate what skills and techniques are required to bring your story to life on the page.
Please feel free to bring a project you have already begun working on or arrive with a blank page – this course is suitable for experienced writers, as well as those who have never set pen to paper or finger to keyboard.
Included
On this course, the tutor will supply materials such as printed documents used as teaching texts.
What students need to bring
Laptop or notebook and pen
Available to buy
Available from shop notebooks, pens, pencils
Additional information
Please wear appropriate clothing/aprons for the workshop or studio, this includes stout covered footwear (no sandals or open toes).
Arrival day
Residential students can arrive from 4pm, non-residential students to arrive by 6.45pm for registration
6.45pm: Welcome, followed by dinner (included)
8 - 9pm: First teaching session, attendance is essential
Daily timetable
Course teaching 9.15am - 5pm (lunch included)
Dinner: from 6.30pm (included for residential students)
Evening working: students may have access to workshops until 9pm, but only with permission from the tutor and provided any health and safety guidelines are observed
Departure day
Course teaching: 9.15am - 3pm (lunch included)
Residential students will need to check out of rooms by 10am
Please note, the tutor may make slight variations to the daily timetable as required
