About

Allaboutwriting is a partnership between Richard Beynon and Jo-Anne Richards who have both made their livings from writing for many years. We’re passionate about good writing, and have devised our courses to help communicate that passion – plus the skills that make it all much more than an academic exercise – to others with a similar calling.

Face-to-face or online

We invite you to join one of our courses either online or face-to-face in South Africa.

The face-to-face courses offer you the chance to interact with like-minded writers intent not just on improving their writing skills, but on having fun while doing so. 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.

The online courses offer you a one-on-one relationship with Richard, Jo-Anne or Mandy which includes personal feedback on all assignments.

We love running these courses for quite selfish reasons. The fact is, during each course, we learn something we didn’t know before – or have insights confirmed by one or other of the participants – or are reminded, repeatedly, of the quite astonishing levels of talent that exist even in people who deny they’re capable of framing a well-balanced sentence.

Which is why we’d love to have you on one of our next courses as you learn the delicate arts of enticing the genie out of the bottle.

For more information please email us admin@allaboutwritingcourses.com

What we offer

Our main service to writers and would be writers is teaching and training. We receive many requests for book reports or manuscript evaluation and although most of our time is devoted to running courses we do offer a limited feedback and book report service.

We have found through experience that when we give individual reports we cover much of what we teach. We feel strongly that many mistakes can be avoided by doing a properly structured writing course whether it is one of ours or someone else’s. In our Creative Writing Course, online or face-to-face, we cover all the necessary skills needed to avoid common errors and so in most cases money would be more wisely spent on a course. Even if you have finished your first draft the process of doing a course will both prepare you very well for the vital editing phase.

Allaboutwriting has a formal relationship with a broad selection of South African publishing companies including Pan Macmillan, Penguin and Jacana. If we think a manuscript is publishable we will make the introduction to the appropriate publishing house.

Additional services

Our monthly Allaboutwriting/continued sessions are a special service offering continued mentorship to anyone who has done either our face-to-face or online Creative Writing Course. Participants are welcome to send in up to 2500 words for feedback and discussion. These sessions are held in Johannesburg in the evening from 7 – 9 pm at the very reasonable rate of R250 per evening.