Second session & still warming

[Preamble: Met some lovely teachers of creative writing at a Brunel conference Saturday; apologies to all trying to purchase the Matrix book this week -- I'm away in Peak District & York, will answer queries on my return 15 Sept -- Susan. Meanwhile, on with tutor tips blog...]

One week later, and the class still won't have fully gelled -- especially because, in adult education, newcomers continue to join in week 2 or even week 3. Unsettling to you and the class, but hey, that's adult ed for you.

So you did a questionnaire to keep 'em busy and suss 'em out last week. Here's a summary of one of my classes, which I incorporated into the content of the second session. Students themselves like to know about the group and it helps in the bonding process. Out of a class of about 12 (remembering that they could give 3 choices each, see last week's blog), the kinds of writing they wanted to work on were

• Novels - 7
• Short stories - 6
• Memoir - 5
• Feature articles - 3
• Poetry - 2 (and those were as 2nd & 3rd choices)

So guess what's not going to feature very much in this course. There was also some demand for info on synopsis and letter-to-agent. You can tell that this is a pretty grown-up group. For beginners I'd take a sampling, but also set an agenda to guide them through a range of disciplines.

More on how I shaped the course to these needs as I go along. As for which exercises for these first few classes -- aha. See my book the Matrix? Or... one exercise per term for free on the http://www.paxtonpublishing.co.uk

Grrrrr: the critic within

Teaching tomorrow, the great gang of writers who have kept their own workshop going for two years. I'm doing 'Dealing with the Critic Within' this time; most of these writers have had that session, but hey, it was years ago. Besides, aren't we all, all the time, parrying our foe, the Inner Critic -- and he/she/it keeps cropping up in sneaky disguises. As a private class of long-time writers we have the luxury of time and experience, so I plan to take us right into the dialogue with the Critic, once identified. (Plug: it's in my book.)

H.A. Klauser's book, Writing on Both Sides of the Brain, (listed in last week's blog) is where I turned on to this amazingly helpful approach.

We'll also do a short bit of freewheeling writing from a prompt. And yesterday I spotted Waterstone's Tell Us Your Story competition, so I plucked a bunch of their postcard forms and with the help of two stimuli (character & setting) we'll have a go. Nothing like a deadline for spurring us on: it's the next day! For those who don't fancy flash fiction it'll just be a character-exploring exercise.

I'm having a whale of a time with Write a Novel in a Month -- complete and utter rubbish is spewing from my 3 x 15 minutes slabs per day. But at least it is spewing: oh, the joy of permission to write rubbish. Take THAT you 'ol Critic, you.