Who Should Take A Creative Writing Course?

Anyone who wants to improve their writing craft should take a creative writing course. Maybe you’d like to write a bestseller or you fancy having a column in a national newspaper. Or, perhaps you want to write your childhood memories for your grandchildren to read. Whatever you want to do with your writing the main question you need to ask yourself is, do you want to:

• write to earn a living?
• write for pleasure?

Writing to Earn a Living
If you want to learn how to write for a living, either part or full-time, you need to take a creative writing course that includes details of how the publishing business works. This includes:

• finding and analysing markets
• layout of manuscripts
• selling your work
• contacting or sending work to publishers
• contracts, copyright, agents, royalties and lending rights
• methods for keeping track of work sent out, accepted and rejected
• setting yourself up as a freelance writer – including recording financial transactions for tax purposes, registering as self-employed and so on.

This is in addition to advice on how to improve your writing so that it’s suitable for publication such as:

• the basics, including spelling, grammar and punctuation
• developing your craft and style

It’s also a good idea to find a course that allows you to try a wide variety of writing. This will enable you to find where you interests lie and what you are good at.

Writing for pleasure
If you only want to improve your skills so you can write for pleasure you will require a different type of course. Courses that advise on writing for pleasure will generally not include the details required for setting yourself up in business, legal aspects, contacting publishers and so on.

They will allow you to concentrate more on perfecting your craft – creating engaging stories, fascinating biographies or beautiful poems – rather than producing work that meets a publisher’s criteria. You’ll be able to write about what you want, not what publishers are looking for. And, if you do decide you want to publish your work you can choose to do so on your own website or via a self-publishing website.

If you want to find out more about being a published writer request a Writers Bureau Comprehensive Creative Writing course prospectus.