Tuesday 29 January 2008

Opportunities via Society of Authors

Just signed on to the Educational Writers Group (EWG) within the Society of Authors; I was focussed on writing novels for my first years of membership. It's very friendly. They have a writer-teacher blog-of-the-month, inspiring to read. Have given me the April slot!

Hope you know that you can join the Society on strength of one book or just a book contract. Extremely helpful. Also, the EWG send out emails, including a recent one re educational publisher looking for writers.

Went to Kew on Sunday to see the magnificent Moores; now off to see the First Emperor warriors at the British Museum. Rich life.

Tuesday 22 January 2008

Prepping a class for advanced writers

I'm in the midst of preparing a single session for a group of former students who have continued meeting on their own as a writers' circle for over a year -- mazeltov! In 2.5 hours we'll do stimulus (cinquains), craft (a scene, with emotional baggage) and process.

Haven't quite decided on process focus; something in me wants to do 'finishing resistance.' Or my own process in writing two cinquains as illustrations for the class, from start to revise, might be useful... 'specially because I began thinking it was 2-3-4-5-2 syllables, then checked my own book and found that was wrong. Revising to the correct form strengthened these little poems.

After my 'gap term' from teaching I'm very much looking forward to leading a circle of creativity again.

Tuesday 15 January 2008

About new gov't tutor registration

Lovely attentive audience for my talk to Women Writers Network last night, and lots of interest in the new government requirement that all who want to teach over 16s must register and qualify. So, in the continuing development of this blogspot I've given a link section (on the right) to the two key sites.

Institute for Learning (IfL) is directly of interest to you as a creative writing tutor, pretty easy to understand. It is the site where you register -- FREE until 31 March 2008; after that £30. My understanding is that you don't have to be teaching right now, or qualified; you'd be an affiliate. Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) is more overall, in-depth, gov't Skills Sector -speak.

Note: if you currently teach and are qualified, you still must register -- if your qualifications were ages ago that's okay, they're easing in the qualification stuff by allowing different categories.

A first qualification course, from this year, is called PTLLS ('petals') -- Preparation for Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector. It's 12 weeks, 3 hrs once a week. It's City & Guilds, kitemark for a good course. You can take it to get you ready to teach, if you want to learn before you plunge in; or, often, you can land yourself a creative writing teaching slot and take this course at the same time. See linklist for sources.

Be not afraid! If you don't plan to teach in publicly funded institutions (borough adult ed, libraries, colleges, prisons etc) then you don't have to worry about all this! But if you might someday, I'm just trying to save you having to pay £30 after 31 March 2008.

Monday 7 January 2008

New Year, new me, new you

Greetings! I'm creating this blog for anyone interested in teaching creative writing to adults. Especially writers who teach (or are about to teach) creative writing in adult education, at writing events etc. Others welcome too, for instance creative writing teachers of all levels and circumstances, teachers of all sorts, maybe even creative writing students and writing circles.

The blog is to back up my book Creative Writing: the Matrix, Exercises & Ideas for Creative Writing Teachers. Such a small niche (hello, fellow nichers!) that I have published it myself (that's a story for a later blog posting). See
http://www.paxtonpublishing.co.uk The book has 95 exercises and 21 mini-lectures plus advice on planning and running a course.

News: If you can get to London, come ask questions direct on Monday 14 Jan. I'm talking at Women Writers Network, 6:30 for 7 pm, Conway Hall, Holborn WC1. For more on WWN see http://womenwriters.org.uk/ Sorry chaps, women only, but I'll be promoting more; watch this space.

Urgent news for all who teach or want to teach adults: there is a new government requirement to register. From March 2008 registering costs £30 but til then it's free. Even if you are not sure you'll teach, or will only teach now and then, you can just be an associate. So do it now while it's free!

And finally... most likely I will update this weekly, not daily. Let me know if Teaching Creative Writing as a blogspot suits your interests. I will blog the progress of Creative Writing: the Matrix, of small publishing, of my adventures in teaching creative writing.