A fun and inspiring way to improve your writing, for experienced writers and beginners alike.

'A brilliant environment for learning and sharing'

Skills : Digging into genre : Workshops to make your writing gleam

'Loved it - loved it all!'

Clare Reddaway runs regular creative writing workshops online from her home in Bath. The fourth workshop in her Spring 2024 series is on Life Writing. Clare keeps her workshops small, enabling all antendees to participate, share, receive feedback and advice.

20th April: Life Writing

In this workshop, we will be exploring into life writing. Memoir, biography, letters, diaries, eye witness accounts – all of these are life writing. In this workshop we will be mining your life to create your fiction. We will make use of objects, photographs, music and sounds, maybe even smells and tastes to trigger memories and recollections. We’ll look at how to balance, as Virginia Woolf says, the ‘granite’ of truth with the ‘rainbow’ of imagination.

The workshop will run for two and a half hours. We will meet online on zoom. Details of the zoom meeting will be sent to you prior to the workshop.

Other workshops in 2024:

10th February: Speculative Fiction

In this workshop we’ll be exploring new and unknown worlds. Futuristic, sci-fi, utopias, dystopias, steampunk, fantasy – let’s see how to depart from realism and inject a bit of surreal into your fiction. The market for speculative fiction is booming and ‘sci-fi’ has moved into the mainstream. If you’d like to dip your toe into this wild world, come along and give it a try. To book click here.

9th March: Historical Fiction, with visiting author Vanessa de Haan

This exciting workshop combines historical fiction exercises with a visit from successful historical novelist Vanessa de Haan. For more information and to book click here.

About the workshops:

The host of the workshop is Clare Reddaway, who has been running monthly writing workshops at her home in central Bath for some years - and now in a very modern way, runs workshops online. All of the workshops aim to be supportive and encouraging to writers of prose, particularly short stories, at all levels. Clare provides exercises which are stimulating and inspiring (hopefully!) in a warm, friendly atmosphere.

What the writers thought:

Some feedback for Clare's workshops:

'If you're thinking about it, take the plunge!'

‘Loved it. Lovely environment and people, great triggers for ideas and inspiration.’

'Totally inspiring!' 'Fun!'

‘Very inspirational and productive’,

‘I loved the way questions triggered ideas that seemed to be close to the surface’.

'SO helpful',

'Friendly feedback',

'I liked the mixture of tips, facts and writing exercises',

'Brilliant. Well constructed. Interesting and informative. Well executed'

'Loved it - loved it all!'

Clare's credentials:

Clare has run writing workshops for many years: at festivals and arts centres with Bristol short story collective Heads and Tales, for Julian House homeless charity in Bath, for the Refugee Centre in Bristol, for the University of the Third Age in Bath. Before Covid, she ran regular workshops at her home in Bath and at Clifton Library in Bristol. Her background as a script editor for BBC Drama and Granada TV and her MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa gives her experience of working with a wide range of writers.