My apologies, because in Post 1738 I promised that in post 1739 I would write about Creative Writing, and I didn’t. So, it’s a bit later than promised.
It seems that I can’t let the idea of creative writing go, even though in fiction terms my attempts have been beyond feeble. Several years ago I did a creative writing course at the local college. There were two sides to the course, one that I enjoyed, and one that I didn’t.
The side that I did enjoy was listening to the output from the other students on the course, there were some really quite talented short story writers. Even the tutor on the course, who was a quite successful author agreed that she would be making suggestions as to how they could get their stories published.
The other side, the one that at didn’t enjoy were my attempts to write fiction. I can only describe my efforts as abysmal. Not only were they bad, but I got quite stressed over writing them. And yet, I did that course twice in succession. There were students there who had repeated the course five or six times at least.
You’d think, wouldn’t you that having walked away from that course I would have given up. Certainly on the fiction side. Well, I pretty much have.
I said near the top that I can’t let the idea of creative writing go, so I’ve signed up for the Future Learn course “How to teach Creative Writing”. What’s that? Here’s you (well, me) moaning about pathetic creative writing attempts, and you’ve signed up to do a course on How to teach the subject? What form of madness is this?
Having signed up on the course, I have mad it quite clear that I won’t be writing fiction, that I will only write non-fiction, but I will take their exercises and adapt them for non-fiction. I still haven’t told you why.
Our local U3A does not have a creative writing group (the next town’s U3A does have such a group, but it’s too far away. So, when I join the local U3A, hopefully in January. I will at some point suggest starting such a group, and to support the case, it would be useful to have an understanding of what is involved with the teaching.
There is a logic there somewhere – I think.
Bills Posts 