I've heard about and signed up for an evening class in "creative writing" tonight's an introductory lesson, to go along and see if I want to join this term.

I haven't been able to find out much at all about it, so it might not be what I'm looking for but it'll be interesting to find out.

The thing is I've not really tried any writing since I was at school, doing essays and this class has been running for a couple of years so it depends whether its suitable for a complete novice and if it will help give me a bit of confidence to try my hand at writing.

I'm a touch nervous - it's awful being the new girl in class, maybe thee will be some other new starters too. Wish me luck.

I'm sure you'll be fine - and if you don't go, you'll never know what it's all about.

Good luck! 

Its only natural to be a bit nervous, but I'm sure you will be fine.  You'll probably really enjoy it once you get there.

Good luck!

Good luck, Jan, it sounds intriguing and would be a really interesting class to take - I hope there are a few other newbies and that you feel confident to sign up for it.  All the best. xx

Good luck and let us know how it goes...I'm sure you'll be fine.

 Good Luck Jan. It sounds a great class and I'm sure you'll meet lots of new and interesting people

 There will plenty of other newbies I'm sure! I've been in so many creative writing classes and groups where I was the most experienced student there, they always have lots of people who are writing for the first time.

 Relax and enjoy it, let us know how you found it :)

Hope it goes well Jan - let us know how you get on.

I quite enjoyed the introductory class last night and have signed up for the first term to see how it goes, its only one evening a week and starts in October. It's pretty informal, there were 12 of us, 9 women and 3 men a good range of ages from early 20s to 70s.

Most of the others have what I'd class as a "better education" (A levels or university) than me and a lot of them have already tried a bit of creative writing, had poems, letters to mags etc published.

When we introduced ourselves I said I was "an active member of a lively, book related internet forum"

We were given a bit of writing to do - and I floundered a bit - we had 5 scenarios to choose from and had to write about one for about half an hour - as I've not done anything like that since I was at school, I found it difficult to plan what I was going to write and sat there for 5 minutes staring at a blank sheet of paper twiddling my pen and when I did begin I was less than half way through when we were asked to stop!

We were told we could read our work out loud to the class but only if we wanted - I chose not to!! About half the class read theirs out and I was very surprised at how good they were, but I think it was the more experienced writers who were confident enough to read out loud.

We have been given a little exercise to do at home for the next lesson. I did think it would have been a few "lessons" first on HOW to begin writing and then some stuff to write but it seems to be dive in and have a go, which is pretty daunting, especially as its geared to writing fiction and poetry.

In the past 35 years all I've written is factual reviews for consumer websites and posts on forums and have only ever written 2 poems and niether of them were very good at all.

It's how to begin writing fiction which I want to discover and get inspiration for ...

Has anyone a few simple tips? to help me get started and not feel too much of a numpty, I'd appreciate it.

 Ok two tricks we are taught is to freewrite which is to write down what ever comes in your mind from the word or picture and don't judge just write and do this for a few minutes. Then go back and see  what words, phrases or lines look interesting.One of the errors that beginning writers do is to plan and edit each word which just blocks you.Its usually recommended that you keep a writers journal and commit yourself to freewrite three pages a day.

 The other trick is cluster writing so you take a word and then write down like a mind map any words you associate with it and then spin them off until you have whole branches of associations that you then explore to see what ideas they give you. I use both tricks to do my 50 word micro-stories http://ramdom-short-stories.blogspot.com/

 Writing down the bones by Natalie Goldberg  and The Artist's Way Julia Cameron are the classic re freeing the creative writer within. I also like Solutions for Writers by Sol Stein who takes a more hardnose approach. For technical advice I would use Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark and Spunk and Bit by Arthur Plotnik

Glad the first class went well! 

Would second John comment that Writing Down the Bones is an excellent book, I have a copy if you'd like to borrow it - its very "zen" but I do dip in it when I need a bit of inspiration/kick up the butt. Also found Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott useful and very funny, though the latter was fairly hard to get hold of.

As for the writing classes - I'm no expert, but the one bit of advice I'd give is not to worry if you don't like the workshopping. One of my tutors made us workshop every other week, and I found them a complete waste of time: I hate reading out my work and listening to other people is good but it gets really boring after a while. Plus, no one ever had anything useful about anyone else's work. It was either met with stony silence, or people going, "hmmm, I liked it."

Anyway hope you get everything you want out of the class, can't wait to read some of the fruits of your labour....

count:

As for the writing classes - I'm no expert, but the one bit of advice I'd give is not to worry if you don't like the workshopping. One of my tutors made us workshop every other week, and I found them a complete waste of time: I hate reading out my work and listening to other people is good but it gets really boring after a while. Plus, no one ever had anything useful about anyone else's work. It was either met with stony silence, or people going, "hmmm, I liked it."

Workshopping can be wonderful, if you get a group who are actually enthusiastic about giving and recieving feedback. If people are too shy to show their writing or don't want to hear your input it'll flop, but it can be great. It can actually teach you more about writing than anything else - learning to pick out the defects in other people's work and make suggestions to improve it will help you tremendously when working on your own.

The one thing you have to remember when your writing is being critiqued is: They are not critiquing you. They are critiquing your work, so that you can make it better and fulfill your potential. If you get constructive feedback, don't try to use it straight away. Write it all down, then go relax for a bit, gain some objectivity, calm down if you need to, before finally returning to what you wrote down. Go through and think about what is useful, and what isn't - if something's going to entirely change the spirit of your piece you may want to leave it. Then try to put it into practise. Don't be afraid to ask people questions and get them to explain their feelings about your piece.

wow I would love to do something like that it sounds great, daunting but really good

I've been going to my class for a couple of months now (just one evening a week) and I'm REALLY enjoying it.

Its a nice mixed group of people and although I felt a bit out of my depth at first the tutor is very encouraging and always tempers any critiscism with praise too.

We've done several writing exercises including using Metaphors and similes using a photo for inspiration, using the five senses and personification/ anthropomorphism. Next week we are dabbling in poetry with Haikus and alliteration.

I'm still a little shy about sharing my work, although my work using 10 words about the dragon which I shared on a different post here went down really well and although it needs a lot more work, its something I will be coming back to and writing more of.

If anyones thinking of doing something similar but is a bit daunted by it - please do have a go!