Autumn Leaves - Start to write, build a writing routine

Autumn Leaves - online writing workshops starting 23 October!

Starting to write and getting into a writing routine can be a daunting process. There's always an excuse not to. There's always something happening in daily life to challenge the commitment. But you want to write, and you need to write. Maybe you used to write but now you just can't do it, or can't find or make the time?

Maybe you've tried strategies such as Julia Cameron's Morning Pages and ground to a halt?

This series of weekly workshops will enable participants to develop a writing practice of their own, build a routine, and overcome blocks.

Whether you are an absolute beginner or a more experienced writer, the sessions will provide you with a series of accessible, basic rules and strategies that will assist you in embedding writing into your daily life. You will also be given prompts and exercises to do between workshops to help you keep going.

The writing prompts start with a focus on memoir, life writing, and immediate sensory and environmental awareness. We later develop ideas around fiction and poetry, but always with the freedom for you to choose how you respond in words.

But Autumn Leaves is a writing workshop with a difference as writers are more than welcome to attend just to claim some writing time in a structured environment, and without participating in the workshop elements.

How it works - we meet every week online, ready to write. We write during the first half of the workshop, and then, in the second half, we read our work to the group. The reading session is not compulsory. You can sit and listen to others. I do not permit critiques of the work read. This is a time of sharing, openness, and of gaining confidence and experience. This is shared creative time. The benefits are many, not least the therapeutic benefits of such creative engagement and of devoting time to our own creativity.

So often, the root cause of not being able to write is fear. Fear of the totemic blank page. Fear of expressing real thoughts and feelings - all the blocks our inner-critic puts in the way of our creativity. For many, it is also simply a matter of not knowing how or where to start. But also, more experienced writers can hit a block, and get out of a routine because of problems that seem immutable. Autumn Leaves can help!

Autumn Leaves will run every week from Thursday 23 October, through to 18 December. That’s nine sessions! Each session will run from 11am-12.30pm via Zoom.

Fees - you can book the entire course of nine sessions for £75 + fees, or pay weekly at £10 + fees per week.

Peter Urpeth - your host

I am a writer, musician, editor and filmmaker, with over twenty years' experience in writing development and support for creative practice. Creative writing is my passion, my refuge, and my profession. I am a published novelist, poet, and journalist with forty years' experience in arts and news coverage.

Full details and all my latest creative news - peterurpeth.com