Creative Writing course

thriller

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a good creative writing course?

Thanks in advance.

EileenG

In September, there should be a good part time one starting in UCD.

Bubblefett

I heard the UCD one is good,

Actually has anyone hear about that writing and illustration for childrens books course in Indipendant Colleges? I'm pretty sure i'm going to sign up for it but i'd just love to know i anyone had taken it or heard if it's any use?

Vim Fuego

I'm surprised there's a not a sticky with info about courses, would be good to have the info for future reference.

Grievous

Vim Fuego wrote: »

I'm surprised there's a not a sticky with info about courses, would be good to have the info for future reference.

That would be a really cool idea. I agree.

My one little quibble about writing courses. Sometimes I feel like they are obstacles for me rather than help.

Sure if they help the technical side of things. great.

I remember reading an introduction to one of stephen kings anthology books, He wrote the introduction himself, And he bascially recounted a story that he always meets people telling him they have always wanted to write and wanted to do courses here and there but never found the time and patience. King's basic advice is, JUST DO IT! Just write and write till your hand lops off:D

I have nothing against courses per se, I might actually pursue one myself soon.

blacon9

You just seem to be negative about a lot of things :P

Courses can't be obstacles mate, if you find them as obstacles then you obviously need them, cus you must be doing a lot wrong.

Grievous

blacon9 wrote: »

You just seem to be negative about a lot of things :P

Courses can't be obstacles mate, if you find them as obstacles then you obviously need them, cus you must be doing a lot wrong.

Wrong.

I am not being negative.

To summarise and clarify what I said and what I truely mean is.

A person can attend a million workshops and seminars. But the true test is getting to work.

Look, Everything is subjective. I am not commenting on anybody's ability to write, King's intro really rang home to me.

As I don't want to telling people at parties in 20 years time that i always wanted to write but never got around to it.

You say i must be doing something wrong? I don't know or understand what angle you are coming from? I write for fun and it is something I enjoy, I have no view or opinion on how good i am. I do know my punctution is rubbish:D and if a course can help me fixed or improve this i will pursue it as I have said.

Tell me this, Can a course improve somebody's imagination? Do you go into a course with a hyperdimendional salamander in your head already, or do you come out with one?

blacon9

Tell me this, Can a course improve somebody's imagination? Do you go into a course with a hyperdimendional salamander in your head already, or do you come out with one?

Yes mate, the right course could open a narrow minded person to possibilities that he/she had never considered, in a lot of areas, and therefore improve the imagination. I do agree with you that a good imagination has to be a born gift, and us writers hold that with pride, but it can certainly be improved in many ways.

As for your punctuation, a course would definitely sort you out there. I just read your story man, and i'll be honest, i thought it was pretty cool. But you do need to work on the punctuation, as putting the words on paper is what makes us writers and not thinkers, so structure is pretty important.

Grievous

blacon9 wrote: »

Yes mate, the right course could open a narrow minded person to possibilities that he/she had never considered, in a lot of areas, and therefore improve the imagination. I do agree with you that a good imagination has to be a born gift, and us writers hold that with pride, but it can certainly be improved in many ways.

As for your punctuation, a course would definitely sort you out there. I just read your story man, and i'll be honest, i thought it was pretty cool. But you do need to work on the punctuation, as putting the words on paper is what makes us writers and not thinkers, so structure is pretty important.

Hey Blacon, Cheers man for the kind words, By all means, Post a comment in that same thread. I would love to have a discussion with as many people as possible.

I agree that a course could open somebody's mind to new things.

Rainbowrapids

I've always been nervous about doing a course, like other posters thought I should just write etc.,. The problem is that I'm great at writing (as in 'can sit down and write lots and lots of words', not as in 'am a literary genius' as you can no doubt deduce from this post), but I would ADORE advice on how to construct my ideas into wonderful start-middle-ends.

Once or twice I've written stories and been delighted by the result (this is out of many, many stories where I've abandoned the laptop determined to dedicate my life to being a reader) and ran to the post-box with my fiver attached to the competition entry only to realise that they obviously were muck as they haven't even been shortlisted.

My fear of courses also comes from attending a writers group once and leaving terrified that I was like any of the brave (but decidedly peculiar) people there. Lovely, interesting people but I didn't see anything to suggest publish-ability. Again abandoned writing for six month period and resumed reading.

Writers courses no doubt are most useful as many excellent published writers have availed of them.

UCD sounds interesting - does anyone know of a course Northside of the Liffey?

blacon9

Yeah i'd like a northside one too, maybe ill ask DCU Book Soc to try get one going (unless they already have one, it's possible).

Rainbowrapids, your screen name really struck me by the way. Contradictory, metaphorical etc, it's really amazing.

Rainbowrapids

blacon9 - oh that I were so lyrical - truth is it was the name of an old water-park in Dun Laoghaire that is now abandoned! It was very kitsch and had a freezing salt-water pool out the front and two luminous coloured tubes that you had to climb a thousand steps to get to where poor goose-pimpled children had their jollies in the dark 1980s. Everyone else remembers it extremely fondly. I was terrified and thought I might die.

Grievous

Rainbowrapids wrote: »

I've always been nervous about doing a course, like other posters thought I should just write etc.,. The problem is that I'm great at writing (as in 'can sit down and write lots and lots of words', not as in 'am a literary genius' as you can no doubt deduce from this post), but I would ADORE advice on how to construct my ideas into wonderful start-middle-ends.

I don't you personally and have not read any of your stuff-I would like to for sure. Send me something.

But I think you would be well able to write a story with a start, middle and ending. I think Kerouac had great success because he done his own thing and avoided conventional rules and limitations.

I think I will book some creative writing course as well. Imagine We all bumped into each other?:D:cool:

blacon9

Haha, fair play to whoever named that park then.

Rainbowrapids

Grievous wrote: »

I don't you personally and have not read any of your stuff-I would like to for sure. Send me something.

But I think you would be well able to write a story with a start, middle and ending. I think Kerouac had great success because he done his own thing and avoided conventional rules and limitations.

I think I will book some creative writing course as well. Imagine We all bumped into each other?:D:cool:

(a) I will send you something. Let me think about it furtively first. Where do I send it? I'm new to this boards.ie etiquette. Also, what are you going to do with it when I send it to you? Read it I hope.

(b) Kerouac is amazing. Avoided reading On the Road for twenty nine years. Then read it. Now regret life before reading it. I also love that he wrote it when he was an adult. Gives those of us who have left our twenties behind great hope.

(c) There's a book in that I say! Random internet posters meet in creative writing course, very 21st century.

blacon9

Also, what are you going to do with it when I send it to you? Read it I hope.

Hahahaha. Sorry, made me laugh. :P

Grievous

Rainbowrapids wrote: »

(a) I will send you something. Let me think about it furtively first. Where do I send it? I'm new to this boards.ie etiquette. Also, what are you going to do with it when I send it to you? Read it I hope.

Lol, I am going to steal your adverbs!

I will definately read it, Send me via PM or start a Thread asking for opinions and I will read it and give my thoughts.

Good chatting with you.

Dublin141

I've never attended a writing course myself but I would imagine that being surrounded by like-minded people would be helpful and hopefully get the 'aul creative juices flowing. I know that I could learn a thing or two, grammar wise. I'm pretty much certain that I would be too terrified to participate, unfortunately.

A writing group would be cool. I think you can learn a lot from other writers and it's brilliant to get the opinions of people who are genuinely interested in the same thing as you. Not everyone is comfortable in a class type setting so it could be an alternative.

WiseMona

Dublin141 wrote: »

I've never attended a writing course myself but I would imagine that being surrounded by like-minded people would be helpful and hopefully get the 'aul creative juices flowing. I know that I could learn a thing or two, grammar wise. I'm pretty much certain that I would be too terrified to participate, unfortunately.

I took a creative writing class last year (September 2008) at NUIG. If they are running it again this year - I highly reccommend it. It not only got the creative juices flowing - it spurred me to throw in the towel on a 15 year career to finally follow my passion and write. I applied to NUIG to get a degree in Creative Writing (BA Connect - creative writing) and start in a few weeks. It was not easy to get accepted (as a mature) because the classes are tiny (less than 15 pp as opposed to 400) and are based on continous assesment (not exams) so everyone wants in!
No need to be terrified! Jump in, the water is warm!

EileenG

Writing courses can vary, though I did an excellent one in UCD last year, but the discipline of getting there, and doing homework, and doing exercises, and writing things that may not inspire you, is invaluable.

Plus, there's a good chance that you'll meet other writers with similar goals, so you can support each other.

If nothing else, it makes you a lot less paranoid about people stealing your ideas. It was truly amazing how the teacher would give a topic for everyone to write about for 10 minutes, and every single person in the class would have a different take on it.

claire h

If you're in Dublin (city centre), there's a new writing school starting up in September: http://www.bigsmokewritingfactory.com/

davyjose

Dublin141 wrote: »

I've never attended a writing course myself but I would imagine that being surrounded by like-minded people would be helpful and hopefully get the 'aul creative juices flowing.

The thing is, this place should be like that - like a free, online writing course. But there are definitely the type that sit behind a keyboard and slate people's work - not constructively criticise, but SLATE - people's work, and that makes the sharing, caring attitude, that should exist here, invisible.

MikeC101

davyjose wrote: »

The thing is, this place should be like that - like a free, online writing course. But there are definitely the type that sit behind a keyboard and slate people's work - not constructively criticise, but SLATE - people's work, and that makes the sharing, caring attitude, that should exist here, invisible.

I don't know - I used to be a member of a genre writing forum that had the "sharing, caring" attitude, and after a while realised it was effectively useless if I was looking to improve and grow as a writer.

Everything, and I mean everything, posted on it was praised excessively. Almost no criticism of the work, and constant reinforcement of how great it was that they'd written anything at all.

And some of the stuff was horrendous - terrible spelling, grammar, structure, dialogue. But due to the niceness and praise, the terrible writers - who would have been much better off taking a basic course in English, or directed to look at Strunks Elements of Style, kept posting rubbish, and couldn't understand why all their submissions to magazines and publishers were being rejected.

So it can swing both ways - I think the balance here is pretty good, it tends to be obvious when someone is just slating for the sake of it.

JamesTaylorfan

EileenG wrote: »

In September, there should be a good part time one starting in UCD.

What would you expect to pay for such a course?

claire h

JamesTaylorfan wrote: »

What would you expect to pay for such a course?

UCD courses are 160 euro for 8 weeks, 200 for 10. Classes are on the large size by some standards - 16-18 minimum to run apparently - but that's pretty decent rate-wise.

EileenG

MikeC101 wrote: »

I don't know - I used to be a member of a genre writing forum that had the "sharing, caring" attitude, and after a while realised it was effectively useless if I was looking to improve and grow as a writer.

Everything, and I mean everything, posted on it was praised excessively. Almost no criticism of the work, and constant reinforcement of how great it was that they'd written anything at all.

And some of the stuff was horrendous - terrible spelling, grammar, structure, dialogue. But due to the niceness and praise, the terrible writers - who would have been much better off taking a basic course in English, or directed to look at Strunks Elements of Style, kept posting rubbish, and couldn't understand why all their submissions to magazines and publishers were being rejected.

So it can swing both ways - I think the balance here is pretty good, it tends to be obvious when someone is just slating for the sake of it.

Definitely agree with this. I did a writing course in Swords, and it was like that. Sometimes you had to really struggle to find anything good to say about the crap that people wrote. And as a result, they were all convinced that they were brilliant, and that nothing they wrote could, or should, be improved on.

Yes, it hurts when someone tells you that you need to rewrite or cut major chunks out of something you've sweated blood to write, but the pay-off is nearly always a much much better piece, which someone might pay money to print!

davyjose

Mike & Eileen, I don't disagree; there's no point in kissing ass for the sake of it, but my point is, there's no point in kicking ass for the sake of it either.
There are folk on here who seem to compare writers on here with JM Coetzee or Salman Rushdie. It's a very brave decision to post on here, and the fact is, many are deterred from doing so by overly the harsh criticism on offer. i don't expect people to be given a free ride, but the freedom to post here is necessary in order to make this forum worthwhile.
Hey, look, if we weren't learning, if we were successful, wealthy, oublished authors, would we be posting here?

No.

So we are aware we have limitations. We don't need them slammed in our faces. That's all I'm saying.

EileenG

Still, you can take on board what you think is relevant, and ignore what your gut tells you doesn't apply. And if someone who is normally pretty harsh tells you have written something good, you know you are not being ass kissed.

If I'm critiquing something, I try to go for what I think will improve the piece. I'm assuming you want that sort of criticism or you wouldn't have posted.

think

If you're still looking for a writing course, I can highly recommend Screencraft. It's a workshop based, character driven course that really elevated my work. I'm not sure when the next one is. You can email them at screencraft@me.com and find out.

Can't recommend it enough..

Wuggectumondo

This is a new organisation who do creative writing courses for beginners.

Sounds like fun and very good quality teaching.

www.bigsmokewritingfactory.com

eoin1981

has anyone done a course in the irish writers centre. im thinking of doing one and would like to hear what people thought of it.
thanks

e