Do you want to write about your life but have no idea where to start? Or have you started writing and feel you have lost the plot? This course will help you find a focus to your story, structure your memories and make them come alive on paper.

 

Writing about a lifetime of rich experience in a way that captures the essence of the people and places involved can be challenging. This course will look at how to tell your life story in a way that will make a compelling read.

 

The course is suitable for all writers, whether at the start of your writing journey, or further along and seeking ideas on how to expand and improve your writing.

 

Working in a supportive, encouraging environment you will explore each of these areas through class discussions and written exercises. Regular feedback and guidance will be provided by the tutor. There will be plenty of time for independent writing in and around the inspirational College and gardens.

Whether you are writing directly about your life or writing fiction, ultimately you base your stories on your experiences and those of others – the common human experience. This course will use life’s experiences as a source for your writing and will help you to bring them alive so that readers will want to keep reading.

Prose and poetry written about a work of art, known as ekphrastic writing, has a long tradition, from ‘The Iliad’ to Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and Tracy Chevalier’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’. This course will consider the many ways a painting can be used as the source of inspiration for a poem or story, including delving into setting, creating and deepening characters, generating atmosphere, investigating lyrical and figurative language, providing historical detail, and more. Previous knowledge of art or artists is not necessary, but where a student does have such knowledge, this can be called on.