An Arvon Weekend

One luxury I never seem to have is time to write, or more specifically time to write my novel.  I've been on so many writing courses it's untrue but one that I haven't sampled is an Arvon course.  Arvon is considered to be the top writing course in the UK and one that any serious writers should go on.   The courses are traditionally a week's residential  in a unique surrounding but unfortunately come at a premium, cue an advert for an Arvon City course offering a three day non residential in Derby, a city not too far from myself.

So this weekend was spent in the company of fellow writers on the Arvon City course learning the tools of trade in order to write a novel.  Mornings were spent in workshops varying from dialogue, getting to know your character and building a scene and afternoons were spent using those skills to improve your own writing.  We also had the privilege of having both of our course tutors, Ross Raison and C J Flood give a reading from their own books and a Q&A session each evening.   One to one tutorials were also given on a set piece of work submitted at the start of the course and we got the chance to read our own work and listen to others do the same.  It was heaven.

I thought at first that it would just do as other courses had, in the fact that I'd completed so many that they tend to repeat themselves and you end up covering old ground. But I'm further on than I was before and I found that the workshops helped push me further in what I wanted to achieve and made me look at my writing in a more advanced aspect.

So all in all, I totally agree with the many before me, that can only say how fantastic these courses are and would thoroughly recommend anyone that is serious about writing to apply to go on these.