Time to Write

This week, I've been updating the course notes for Time to Write.
     Time to Write is a creative writing course designed for new, aspiring or rusty writers. It's intense and fun and starts on Tuesday 30th April at the American Association of Singapore.
   Over the course of three weeks, students will reacquaint themselves with their creative side and develop ideas in a supportive and helpful environment.
     I've met so many people who have said, "I'd love to write, but can't."
   What they really mean is, "I can't write a best-seller," or, "I don't have the confidence," or worse still, "I'm talentless and unimaginative."  What has caused their passion to be crushed? It's only a pigeon step from that corrosive attitude, to the admonishment of desire and abandonment of ambition.
     Do other creatives do this? Are there thousands of amateur singers, actors, musicians or artists who have disenfranchised themselves because they will never reach professional status? The plethora of amateur dramatic societies, art classes and choirs answers that. So why do amateur writers do it?
     Is it because at school we can fail in creative writing?
     Is it because we assume that every book, play or poem is a first draft, not the 10th, 20th or 30th?
     Is it because writing is private, so few understand the motivation and process?
     Is it because success is not rated in our ability to touch, but our ability to earn?
     Is it because we have crushed our passion with the weight of an endless 'to do' list?
Whatever the reason, this self-harm should cease.
     Everyone with a passion to write, needs to be:-

• encouraged,  
• taken seriously, 
• given permission to write,
• the tools to improve,
• the right to try, and fail, repeatedly. 

     This is the raison d'etre for courses like Time to Write. Indeed, on day one, I will tell my students that we are all creative beings and everyone has an immense imagination. That will be followed by four hours of creating story ideas and characters. Having experienced the intense power and originality of their own imaginations, the students can only advance. Advance towards a more confident and less self-critical future where they don't have to prove they're a Shakespeare before allowing themselves time to write.
     Turning to sometime completely different, thank you for all the wonderful comments on last week's blog.  For those who missed it, it was the story of how our garden changed from this...

 January 2018

to this.  

April 2019

I'll be back again next week when I'll update you on the course and tell you about the forthcoming book talk.

Thanks for dropping by.

Ta-ra.