Course Description

Do you want to write but somehow never get round to it? Do you have a story to tell but you don’t know where to begin? Have you started to write and ground to a halt? Do you love words and laugh out loud at the funny things people say and do? Do you wish you knew how to take all this and put it on the page? How do you begin?

Don’t wring your hands in frustration, the answers are right here. It could be the easiest thing in the world to pick up a pen and begin to write, yet somehow it seems the hardest. And most tantalising: anyone with an abandoned novel or short story gathering dust knows that writing unlocks the imagination and lets the spirit soar.

Help is at hand to reveal your potential.

What's Included

In a two day workshop, best selling author Raffaella Barker will lead you through the labyrinth to find your voice. Using a combination of practical exercises and discussions, as well as excerpts from some great classic novels and short stories to illustrate the points covered, she will show you how to create characters, set up a story, devise a plot and give it the impetus to get to the end.

The workshop environment takes the sting out of the fear of the blank page and participants will emerge from their weekend with a set of skills they didn’t know they had and some pieces of writing they can be proud of.

Tea and cake and plenty of praise help make this weekend a lot of fun and fertile ground for the imagination.

The course will include a guest seminar on Sunday 3 February with the bestelling author of Outcast, Sadie Jones. 

Tutor Details

Raffaella Barker began writing novels at around the time she began having children, and is the author of 9 of the former and the mother of 3 of the latter. The ticking taxi meter of time when the children were asleep or occupied was a great disciplining force out of which her writing grew. Her novels include the autobiographical Come and Tell Me Some Lies, and the best selling Hens Dancing and Summertime, the fictional diaries of slightly loopy mother and Georgette Heyer enthusiast Venetia Summers.  

Her more recent novels, A Perfect Life and Poppyland continue to reflect on the depths and indeed the shallows of family life. She has taught creative writing for a number of years, and on many levels  including the highly acclaimed Arvon Foundation courses, and in workshops and one-to-one sessions. She also works as a newspaper columnist and feature writer.

Sadie Jones is the author of the novels The Outcast, winner of the Costa First Novel Award in the United Kingdom and a finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; and Small Wars, a tale of love, war, and honor, which was published to critical praise on both sides of the Atlantic. The Uninvited Guests is her third novel. Sadie Jones lives in London.

More Information

The course will take place from Saturday 2 February to Sunday 3 February 2013 inclusive at the Faber Academy, Faber & Faber UK Ltd, Great Russell Street, London WC1. 

Maximum number of students: 18 places, on a first-come basis. 

Faber Academy is a creative writing school run by one of the great independent publishing houses, Faber and Faber. Based on 80 years of publishing experience, Faber Academy knows that writers need space and support. Enjoy the best tuition from hand-picked authors, editors and agents, on a range of practical courses – to help you get it written, and written well.