How many people feel a novel lurking within them just bursting to get out? A recurrent itch to tell a story that expresses itself in an irresistible desire to open a new file called “My Novel”? Or in the urge to take notes while inadvertently eavesdropping in your favourite coffee-shop?
What you have half in mind needn’t be a novel, of course – it could be a screenplay, a play for the stage, or a compelling work of narrative non-fiction that would, if you could only get over the first few hurdles, put Jonny Steinberg in the shade.
The problem seems to come when you tilt at the thing itself. Your initial idea doesn’t seem as interesting as it first appeared. It doesn’t seem to have the legs a novel demands. Or, while the idea stands up to second and third scrutiny, the characters seem to lack life. They’re a little colourless. And in their hands your sparkling story seems to be running out of fizz…
What we’ve learned – and what we’ve demonstrated in a number of workshops, writers’ retreats, writers’ circles, and our on-line courses – is that it is possible to learn skills and techniques that, properly wielded, solve each of these (and the hundreds of other) problems the working writer is likely to encounter.
We – that is, Richard Beynon and Jo-Anne Richards – have three writing courses planned the first quarter of 2009. They are:
- A Twelve Week Writers’ Circle Course beginning on 19 January and running on Monday evenings between 7.00pm and 9.30 pm until April 6 in Parkview, Johannesburg. We’ll run through all the skills you’ll need from finding a voice to plotting a piece of writing from beginning to end. The first part of every meeting will cover the skills involved in writing, its dos and don’ts, its cans and can’ts; the second part will be spent work-shopping, mentoring and trouble-shooting works in progress.
- An intensive two-day Johannesburg Weekend Writers’ Circle Course on 31 January and 1 February preceded by a getting-to-know you evening session on Friday 30 January. Participants will learn the essential skills demanded by any ambitious writing project. It’ll be a practical and skills based (and fun) weekend designed to inspire you to write that too-long-delayed book.
- A two-and-a-half day Vrede Creative Retreat on 13 – 15 March in the working agricultural town of Vrede in the Free State. This will be a writing experience with a difference, focusing on the practicalities of writing fiction or non-fiction, with an emphasis on creative exercises. The residential retreat will equip you with the core skills necessary to undertake any major writing project in an environment that encourages and inspires participants to think and write out of the box.
There is nothing quite as collegial as discussing solutions to literary problems with a company of people engaged in the same frustrating, exhausting, exhilarating quest to tell an engaging story as effectively as possible.
These courses are suitable for anyone with an interest in writing, or a proposed writing project, even if it’s only the sketchiest idea at this stage.
If you’re interested, and for further information on availability, email us on allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za or call Trish on 082-652-4643,
