ONLINE WRITING COURSES, WORKSHOPS & RETREATS

Thoroughly excellent course. A guided tour of the first draft you thought you knew, with myriad exercises to ensure you end up knowing it better. Help to recognise its strengths, and strategies to deal with its weaknesses. Advice, support, and plain good sense. A variety of approaches, to suit different kinds of writers. By the end of the course, I was raring to go, and what’s more, I knew what I had to do to make my draft into the best book it could be.

This is a fantastic course. It helped me step back from my manuscript, asked me difficult questions about plot, consistency and character that I’d been happily ignoring, and helped me to deal with each issue in easy to manage chunks rather than one overwhelming beast. The forums are so useful. Being able to talk to other people in a similar situation to myself, and giving as well as receiving feedback was just as important for me to learn as the course material was. I’m already booked on my next course!

I’d been tentatively picking at the second draft of my novel for a while when I signed up for this course, aware that it needed a lot of work, and afraid to properly commit to it. This course kindly but firmly took me in hand and made me look at all the things I didn’t want to look at (ie everything). It gave me a synopsis (wasn’t expecting that!). It helped remind me what I was trying to say in the first place and why that was important to me. It gave me a plan for my next draft. And, most importantly as far as I am concerned, it gave me the push I needed to get back to writing the novel. The forums are also really useful for bouncing ideas around, and it was so good to chat to other people who were at the same stage with their books! Thank you, thank you, Jo and Sarah – I will be back for more soon.

5 stars? A whole constellation for this course. Sarah and Jo are extremely talented teachers masquerading as loons. They will make you a better writer.

Being on draft 9 for the book I wanted to edit AGAIN, I wasn’t sure how this course was going to make me see things differently. But wow, it really did. Breaking a novel down into its mathematical building blocks (and let’s face it, i do have geek tendencies, so if there is a formula, I’m happy) was a unique way to go about editing. Pulling apart first rather than building. Once all those little itty bitty blocks became their own entities, it was so much easier to see where the gape were in my novel and what needed fixing. I will definitely be using this method for all of my other novels and going back over them with this same approach. Sharing with other writers at the same stage, both offering and receiving support gives companionship in a lonely career/hobby etc. So glad that I have now met more writers and hope we can continue to engage. A great way to learn. Also – the humour of Jo (and Sarah) really make the learning curves a little less painful and I can’t count the number of times I’ve have quite literally laughed out loud. Am contemplating coming back for more as wondering what the initial plotting course is all about. Husband….?

If you think you’ve done editing courses before, so you don’t need to do another one, then you’re completely and utterly wrong. This course takes your book by the short and curlies and makes it scream for it’s mamma. Because this course isn’t your average ‘let’s look at some of your prose & pretty it up’ kinda course, it’s a RIP IT TO PIECES & GIVE IT A FULL BODY SEARCH kinda course. Sound brutal? It is. Your brains will ooze out of your ears. But you won’t regret it. Not one bit. Trust me. By the time you’re done, you will know exactly what you need to do to your book to get it to tell the story you want it to tell. What more can you ask?