During last night's creative writing class, it occurred to me that it might be useful to readers of this blog if I began posting the regular creative writing exercises that I set for students in class, as well as a few notes on the topic of each weekly class. As this kind of material is more directly relevant to my other blog The Writing Coach I shall post the exercise there, so please do click through to join in with the class. Any feedback is welcome and I'll be interested to know how you get on with the exercises.
I'm pretty excited also right now, as I have just launched my new Literary Consultancy and its fabulous to be working with some wonderful manuscripts. So many of my students are so talented, I feel privileged to be in a community of such inspired writers. What's great about working with other people's writing is that I always see the strengths of the writing very clearly, but sometimes those strengths may be eclipsed by some omission or a lack of narrative drive or an unclear narrative voice. It's a business in which one has to be extremely honest; there's no point telling somebody their work is just great and ready for publication when frankly it sucks! But what I find heartening about being in this line of work is that much of the time, some very talented writers simply don't make the break-through with their work because nobody has taken the time to look at the work closely with them and find out exactly what is working and what is not and what needs to be done to make it better. Having worked in an informal way over the past year editing manuscripts of fellow novelists, and also coaches looking to publish e-books, I'm looking forward to continuing this work and potentially working with literary agents to talent spot (there's just so much of it about - how can I, in good faith, let it lie on a shelf?)
My daughter starts school in September and my year working at Richmond College draws to a close. What lies ahead is the completion of my own fourth novel (bliss), time to pursue other avenues of creativity (I'm planning to begin a course in ceramics; to be a student at the college rather than a teacher) as well as furthering my consultancy and coaching, reaching a wider audience with this work. As I miss the teaching, I'm also hoping to run regular free tele-classes in creative writing and expanding one's creativity. Watch this space...
(In case anyone's wondering, I ain't heard a scratch nor a squeak from the rats all day, my hallway is flooded with light and I chose a fabulous hairpiece from Hobbs for my neice's wedding as well as a cuddly Starwars Yoda doll from Clinton for my little girl. Half-full? Heck, it's flowing over...)
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