Writerish

January/February 2010 courses

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:16:00 +0000

New version of this website coming in 2010, including more details about mentoring-for-novelists, but in the meantime:

Big Smoke courses which start after Christmas are open for booking now, including my Novel in Progress (Monday evenings), Starting A Novel (Friday afternoons), and Angst & Adventure: workshop in children's and young adult fiction (Wednesday evenings).

Halloween workshops!

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Information about the Song and Writing workshops for the October mid-term break is up now! We're running two workshops - one for kids (8-12) and one for teens (13-17) - at Ballinteer Community School, Tues Oct 27 - Fri Oct 30. The kids workshop runs from 9am-2.30pm, the teen workshop 10am-3.30pm, and in both, all levels of musical and writing experience are catered for. Registration forms are available from the site - workshop fee is €125 per student, with a family discount available (even if family members are taking different workshops).

Meanwhile, over at the Big Smoke Writing Factory, there are two open registration evenings coming up before term starts: one on Friday 11 Sept, 6-9pm and another on Saturday 19 Sept, 2-6pm. We're accepting bookings right up until course start dates providing places are still available. Had lovely chats with people at last open evening about YA fiction, novel writing, and writing in general, so should be fun!

(Using more exclamation points than usual these days - sometimes the sign of a deranged mind, they say, but mostly, I think, a sign of really looking forward to various upcoming workshops... oh, and a ! for good measure!)

Autumn/winter 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:41:00 +0000

As the academic year rolls around... here are some of the things I will be doing in the autumn/winter which are sign-uppable for. (So not a word. Indeed. Forgive me.)

Creative writing classes for adults at Big Smoke Writing Factory (online registration available at the site)
-- Novel In Progress workshop (Monday evenings)
-- Starting A Novel (Tuesday mornings or evenings)

Creative arts workshops for kids and teens with Song and Writing (registration will be available online soon)
-- October midterm break workshop for 8-12-year-olds
-- October midterm break workshop for teens
-- Teachers, find out about getting a workshop into your school

School and library visits
-- Find out more here.

What I did on my summer holidays, part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:05:00 +0000

This is something I've been working on, with a number of other fabulous writers-who-teach, for the last six months. So it is wonderful and slightly surreal to announce that the autumn/winter course list for the Big Smoke Writing Factory is up at its website now, and that it's launching in September.

Mostly all I can say is: YAY!

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What I did on my summer holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:41:00 +0000

This summer I facilitated our first Song and Writing workshop, and taught Novel Writing again for the ever-wonderful CTYI summer programme. The first was a small project which is just getting off the ground, a pilot run, and the second was something that had been pencilled in since this time last year. But in a lot of ways they were doing the same thing: bringing together a bunch of creative, interested, and engaged teenagers to do something over the summer. And it is amazing, the kind of atmosphere you get when that happens.

I have a lot of empathy for teenagers, partly because not so long ago I was one, and partly because even as a teenager I spent a lot of time writing about what it meant to be a teenager in Ireland today. And what it meant to be reflective about that, and about other things. To have opinions and to have interests and for these things to not necessarily be the kind of things other people of one's age were always going to be interested in. I also had the good fortune of having a bunch of friends, many made through CTYI, who were warm and smart and brilliant and funny and thoughtful and opinionated and interested. (As well as being neurotic and crazy and a whole bunch of other things that come with being a teenager, of course.)

So when I started talking to the people behind giftedkids.ie, an online resource for parents and educators of gifted kids and teens in Ireland, and they mentioned the following key words in quick succession: gifted, creative, teenagers, writing. The idea was a forum, an online magazine, for gifted, talented, creative and above all interested teenagers: Our Voice. It's coming out of a recognition that spaces for gifted teens are few and far between in Ireland, but it's also a space for anyone who's interested, who has interesting things to say, a space for analysis and debate and reflection and commentary, and includes a separate journal for creative work, for stories and poetry and art and comics and films and music and anything else that comes to mind. It's a space for, I guess, all the stuff there maybe isn't a space for in many lives.

In many ways I want to sit down and write the thing myself. I want to write about gender stereotypes in Irish schools, in the media, in relationships and friendships. About why history matters, and why science matters but is also not some unquestionable absolute. I want to write about why books are important and why college choices are less life-defining than they can seem at seventeen. But, you know, that's not my space. It's for 13-18-year-olds, more or less, and I'm there to help out, to facilitate, not to do all the talking. So I'm shutting up now. But it's there, for teenagers, if they're reading.

(Feel free to pass on the link to anyone who might be interested. Press release can be found here.)

Reminder: free Song & Writing workshop this Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:04:00 +0000

Just a reminder that I'm co-facilitating a free Song & Writing workshop for teenagers this Saturday, 11am-1pm, Ballinteer Community School, if you (teenager) are looking for something to do post-exams, or if you (parent of teenager) wish to get the 'getting them out of the house as much as possible over the summer!' thing started early.

Booking forms for the week-long course in June are available from songandwriting@gmail.com also.

Song and Writing workshop

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:42:00 +0000

So, news! I am co-facilitating a Song and Writing workshop with a very good friend of mine, a marvellously creative and clever lady whose background is in music and music education. We're bringing our education-y, summer-camp-y, creative-y knowledge together to run a week-long course in Dublin (Ballinteer Community School) for teenagers (recommended age: 14-17-year-olds), June 22-26, 10am-3.30pm, which will involve creative writing, song writing, music, performance, drama, and some other bits 'n' pieces as well. It's €150 for that week.

Ah, but wait, there's more. We're offering a free taster workshop on Saturday, May 30. It'll run from 11am to 1pm, also in Ballinteer Community School. Email us at songandwriting@gmail.com to book a spot on the free workshop, to sign up for the June course, or with any questions and queries you might have.

Edit: don't worry if you couldn't make it along on Saturday May 30 - there are still some places available for the June course if you're interested.

Edit the second: If you're finding this page long after June '09, never fear: check out songandwriting.com for information on future workshops.

'School visits' versus 'workshops'

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:39:00 +0000

Have some school visits coming up next week. I like Alix Flinn's tips for school visits, which are mostly translatable into doing visits for secondary schools here (I wanted to say something here about never having flown anywhere for a school/library visit, but actually I did once opt for an Aer Arann flight across the country as it was cheaper than a train ticket).

I have a page about school/library visits here, because it seems like a wise move. These are usually not workshops. In workshops it is not particularly important whether participants are familiar with what the writer has published, because the focus is on how the writer can help participants with their own writing for the time that they have together. It helps, I think, particularly with younger groups, if there's familiarity there, but it's not absolutely necessary.

On the other hand, the emphasis in a visit is about the author themselves. Not that it's an ego-trip, but that the focus is on what this author has learned from their own experiences, and what they can say about the world of writing professionally based on those experiences. The jumping-off points for talking about writing are different: with a visit it's the author's own works, whereas with a workshop it's a particular writing exercise. This isn't an especially rigid classification, but that's been my experience. With a workshop it also helps to have more time, so that a writing exercise can be explained properly, so that it can be discussed afterwards, and so that feedback can be given to as many students as possible. (After all, if it's just about doing a writing exercise, the teachers in the school can grab a book or go online and pick one. Part of what you're getting in a workshop, facilitated by someone outside the school, is a fresh opinion, as well as someone with a different professional background.)

Why have an author visit? They're often about encouraging reading more so than writing. Even if a group has never heard of the author (and this really is where teachers owe it to their students and to the visiting writer to provide enough background information before the visit), the author will probably read something from at least one of their books. That in itself might be enough to spark a conversation. It can also make a difference for kids to see that writers are real people, that they exist and that they can be there in front of them and that writing is not this mystical magical process that's completely cut off from them. And that there's this connection between this person sitting in front of them and the words that they're reading out and the book in their hands, a link that can make books suddenly relevant.

Why have a workshop? If you have a group who are passionate about writing, or it is important to you as a teacher or a librarian that they begin to develop this passion. This may well be less important than getting students excited about reading (if they don't like reading, they will probably not be terribly excited about writing). The kind of writing they will do in a workshop will not be the sort of stuff that teachers should be teaching them. It will not be about How To Impress The Junior Cert Examiner or How To Punctuate Correctly. It may not follow a teacher's ideal of what good writing is. (Look, I adored English in secondary school. Or from third year onwards, at least. But I have also seen far too many bright, creative people who write very well and yet don't get good marks in English-as-taught-in-school to feel comfortable advocating school English as an appropriate preparation for those who want to write creatively.) In short, workshops may not be suitable for many groups, though they might be perfect for some.

This is just my take on the matter (she said, in that terribly feminine way of qualifying her opinion): I strongly encourage those organising visits or talks to think about why they're doing so, and what they hope the students to get from it. Usually it's fairly simple (get them enthused about reading! Have a real life author there for them! Find something to take up that Thursday afternoon class!), but if there's something specific you hope an author will cover with the students (e.g. getting a very reluctant-reader group interested in reading, or doing a writing exercise with the group), discuss it beforehand, and don't assume that it comes as part-and-parcel of their standard visit.

Summer classes

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:50:00 +0000

Currently sorting out my classes for the summer. Will be running a Novel Writing (continuation) class in Dublin, among others. I'm looking forward to that. More info when I have it.

Just finished up the spring term at CTYI, which involved a presentation to parents as part of the final class. Previously it's been parent/teacher meetings, one-on-one, but I liked the way this worked; parents get a little taste of what the class is like and hear some of the work, and I get to remind the students, while explaining to the parents, what we did in class and why.

It's a tricky balance, how much to explain to the students (the youngest are eight, and may well not particularly care about the 'why' of doing something) and how much to 'send them off into the world with', and how much to explain to parents so that they can offer reassurance or guidance for their kids in the future without being pushy about it. But I liked the inclusive nature of this, having to discuss with parents what had been covered without alienating the student section of the audience. There's so much 'talking over their heads' at that age that it's nice to avoid that.

Until the summer, I'm doing some 'reading over stuff' in a few different capacities and some school visits. Trying to decide whether manuscript critiquing might be worth looking into (as a proper service to offer, rather than as a very occasional favour) or if it's far too time-consuming. Leaning towards the latter at the moment, but any thoughts would be appreciated...

Why take a writing class, part II.

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:42:00 +0000

Some points on that last post and over at the LJ:

1) genre snobbery: which I feel is silly and pointless

2) one 'right' way of writing: see above

3) time spent workshopping versus 'in a class', critiquing work by peers vs by published authors, free writing, genre/form-specificness of a class: things to muse upon

Because for all that there isn't really one right way of going about teaching a class, because people are not robots (last time I checked) and even the same people will want something different from a class depending on where they're at with their own writing (or possibly lack thereof), and I don't think anyone really emphasises this enough, but teaching creative writing is a creative activity in itself. If you're using some of the same building blocks each time you do it, you're still adding on new ones each time, still coming up with something different by the end of it.

All that being said, I get a lie-in tomorrow rather than getting up to teach, and I am grateful for it. :)

Why take a writing class?

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:36:00 +0000

I don't think anyone needs to take a writing class, which is possibly the wrong sort of thing to be saying when one teaches such things. But it's the truth, and honesty is a good policy: it is possible to write, and to write well, without ever having taken a writing class in your life.

So why bother, then? First off is why anyone takes any kind of class - because it's motivation to do the work that you could do on your own, but would tend to put off if you didn't have a class to go to. For the majority of people who want to write, there is always something more immediate, more pressing, than writing. Their full-time job. Their families. Housework. Social life. For the majority of people, especially when starting off and not at the stage of publishers' deadlines, they only have to answer to themselves when it comes to their writing and getting it done.

Having a class helps. It means people work instead of not working. It means there's a structure to it, it means getting to meet other people who are facing the same problems you are - the balance between life and work and writing - and finding ways to deal with them. It means productivity, first and foremost.

That's before the help that constructive criticism, especially from a practicing writer or experienced facilitator, can provide, not to mention comments from your peers. Before getting a kind of structure that might be useful in working on larger projects or in new genres or fields.

But for now I'm curious, and opening this up to whoever might stumble across this - what experiences, good and bad, have you had in writing classes or workshops? If you write but have never taken a class, why not? For both: is there any kind of class you wish was out there, but doesn't seem to be?

(I came across a thing that combines yoga and writing recently, which seems quite cool and would be the sort of thing that would be amazing to run if one were both a writer and yoga teacher. Oh, these multi-talented folk.)

CTYI spring/summer 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:34:00 +0000

At the moment I'm teaching Imaginative Writing for the 8-12s on Saturdays at CTYI. Sometimes the students interpret 'Imaginative' as 'fantastical', which it doesn't need to be, though often it is. I like it; it's a course I've taught a few times and it's always different. Some things stay the same: there's usually something to do with character development, there's reading out of work, and there's free writing. But other things change. It's to do with 'going off topic', I think; writing classes very easily go off-topic, filled with people who like telling stories, and kids are (sometimes) quite unselfconscious about that. But it's a class where the main purpose is to get students writing, get them trying new things, introduce them to the dreaded concept of 'drafting'. So off-topic-ness can always be lured back and used.

The Novel Writing course (Session 2 of the summer programme, 12th - 31st July 2009) is a bit different in that it has more specific goals. It's three weeks, full days, older students (12-16s, secondary school), and a group novel to write in the second week and an individual chapter to write in the third. But the very nature of it means that it can't ever be exactly the same, year after year, and I like that. Plus the fact that it's concentrating on novel writing in particular means it's something different for students who've taken a general creative writing class, or who always opt for the 'write a story' essay on their English exams.

(Note, casual and unofficial, for eligible CTYIers and/or their parents: deadline for receiving applications is April 3. Other classes people of a creative/writerish persuasion might be interested in include the following: 'Write, Act, Perform', 'Writing for Life', 'Speculative Fiction Writing', 'Journalism', 'Drama', and 'Gothic Studies'. Watch as the humanities take over nerd camp!)

About Claire

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:26:00 +0000

'About' pages tend to feel like they should be written in the third person, like mini-biographies inside book covers. I'm curbing the urge.

My writing background:

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and when working on what became my first published book I started thinking about publication. Dear Diary... (Poolbeg Press, 2000) appeared on bookshelves almost two years after I'd started writing it, and several more books with Poolbeg followed: Being Her Sister (2001); Memories (2002); Stereotype (2003); Good Girls Don't (2004); Afterwards (2005); That Girl (2007); Big Picture (2008). The first three were collected in Girls on the Verge: the Claire Hennessy Collection (2005). My ninth book, Every Summer, has just been published (summer 2009). These are books mostly for teenagers and pre-teens (the central characters range between 12 and 18), and I cling to the 'young adult' label where possible. I'm a fan of the first person, the present tense, and multiple viewpoints. All my books come under the heading of 'realistic fiction' and have a contemporary setting, although some day I do want to delve into the more improbable or otherworldly for at least some of my work.

***

My teaching background:

I started giving talks and readings and doing school and library visits shortly after the publication of my first book in 2000 (actually, I think the first visit was just before the book was in the shops). I've also spoken at conferences and other events on various issues to do with writing for children and teenagers. These things tend to be once-off events.

In terms of designing and teaching longer courses for adults, I taught the Novel and Novel 2 course at the Irish Writers' Centre (Parnell Sq, Dublin 1) for several terms (2006-8). These were 12-week evening courses, concentrating specifically on novel writing (I also taught an Intermediate Creative Writing course in 2007, where I remembered that things like short stories, poetry and scripts also exist).

I've worked at CTYI (the Irish Centre for Talented Youth) at Dublin City University since June 2005. I worked as a teaching assistant on several courses (Writing For Life, Speculative Fiction Writing, Imaginative Writing) before becoming an instructor. Since 2006, I've taught Script Writing, Writing Stories and Imaginative Writing to 8-13-year-olds, and - since 2007 - Novel Writing to 12-16-year-olds (an intensive three-week summer programme). I also worked as a tutor on the Writing By Mail correspondence course (12-16-year-olds; Transition Year students) and designed the Writing By Mail courses for 8-13-year-olds.

I co-facilitate Song and Writing creative arts workshops (song writing, creative writing, drama, music, performance) for kids and teens. I run these with a good friend of mine, Dara Black, who does magical things with music and with teaching.

I'm one of the founders of the Big Smoke Writing Factory, a space for creative writing workshops, classes and other events in Dublin, run by writers who are also experienced facilitators and bring these twin skills to the classroom. I'm teaching novel writing and young adult fiction in the autumn/winter of 2009.

I've also done some manuscript critiquing, both for pay and on a voluntary basis, and am happy to discuss that with anyone who might be interested.

***

What and how I teach:

I believe in tailoring course content to suit a particular group, though obviously depending on age group, time available, and course title, the amount of flexibility varies. A 'general' creative writing course can lead almost anywhere, whereas a course on, say, The Novel, or Young Adult Fiction, or Short Stories, will understandably focus on those things. However, topics might turn up in a different order, or some exercises not used or exchanged for others, in those kind of classes depending on how the course goes. Or to put it another way: there are many routes to whatever the goal of the class is.

I don't use a huge number of examples of 'great works' when I teach, and try to keep the excerpts I do use from relatively recent works (i.e. not Shakespeare, Dickens, or Joyce). I am a believer in thinking about why what you're reading works, but in analysing it from the point-of-view of a writer/reader rather than a literary critic. (So leaving out words of the variety that start with 'post' and end with 'ism' when discussing something, for example.)

The balance between 'writing time', discussion, workshopping (offering up work for constructive criticism) and reading varies from class to class, but (especially in classes for adults) the expectation is that students will work on material outside of class as well, whether it's finishing up or polishing a piece or, say, writing another chapter of their novel.

My main goals when I teach are to get people writing now rather than writing one day, and to help people identify their particular strengths and utilise them in their work. My particular teaching strengths are in a) fiction, particularly novels; b) writing for younger audiences; c) facilitating groups that are working on long-term projects (a novel, a novella, a collection of short stories, etc).

I suspect I'll be revisiting this post every so often. Last updated: 2 September 2009.

Why Writerish.org?

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:12:00 +0000

So, the why of writerish.org. It's not my first website, or my me-as-writer website - that lives at clairehennessy.com, and it's not my first blog - I babble on over at livejournal quite a bit. Why on earth, then, do I need another site for? (Quite aside from the joy of having a 'dot org', of course.)

Some of the writerly-tangential things I do tie into my books, and the site and LJ, quite nicely: readings or school visits, where the focus is usually on the specific writer and what they have written and why they've written it and whether or not they've secretly disguised ex-lovers or former friends in the text. That kind of thing. But then there are other things, like creative writing classes or workshops, where what you bring to the table has less to do with your own work so much as what you've learned from it, and what you've learned about "the writing process" (let's keep the quote marks there, shall we?) in the years you've been writing and publishing.

So what I'm trying to do here, I guess, is to have a site I can point people towards to let them know about classes/workshops that I'm doing, or collaborating with, or whatever else seems relevant, without having to subject them to days and days wading through various versions of 'Dear livejournal, today I drank lots of tea and pondered the meaning of life.' We'll see how it goes.

Test

noreply@blogger.com (Claire) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:56:00 +0000

Does it work? Let's find out, shall we?