“Refining Writing”is designed to enhance and extend the principles laid down in “Creating Writing” by helping you establish editing and polishing processes to increase the overall quality of your finished creative work.
Like “Creating Writing”, “Refining Writing” can be taken either as part of our MLitt in Writing Practice and Study or as a stand-alone Module (once you have completed “Creating Writing”).
Either way, taken together, “Creating Writing” and “Refining Writing” establish your base for ongoing work in creative studies – and are a precise and engaging way of defining and locating your individual imaginative skills.
“Refining Writing” aims to encourage those objective, editing based skills that are so necessary when developing creative work to a high standard. Where the aim in “Creating Writing” was to help establish the writer’s voice and theme and tone, the emphasis is now upon refining that work – coming to understand what is good about it and why, what areas need strengthening, what areas need to be cut back...
All giving you a sense of yourself as both writer and editor, artist and curator. And establishing an independence of judgement and a trust in your imaginative direction that will stand you in good stead for writing years ahead.
The Module is designed to be individually oriented as well as highly practical – based around intensive skills-directed workshops, seminars and intensive oneon- one tutorials where the work in hand is rigorously edited and honed according to lessons learned in class.
The Module is delivered in a similar way to “Creating Writing”. Tutorials at the start of Semester will give you close feedback and direction for your work, while the Workshops will help you become your own editor, giving you skills and the experience of polishing and refining your work in class that establish good practice in your own time. “Wordcraft” seminar will continue to develop your eye and ear as a writer and are designed to help you pay attention to some of the key features of poetry – rhythm, sound, music – that are inherent in exploring a writer’s notion of “voice”.
Like “Creating Writing” this Module has been designed to allow you to benefit most from intensive teaching by allowing for editing time with your Writing Buddy.
As before, Kirsty Gunn teaches prose and Jim Stewart teaches poetry. All sessions combine practical exercises with a consideration of written texts and the sharing of work is encouraged in read-through times in class, as well as in the editing sessions mentioned above. Key individual tutorials take place near the beginning of Semester to provide guidance on the project in hand.
The basic timetable is as follows:
Week One:
Individual Tutorial (1 hour)
Week Two:
Editing time with Writing Buddy – no class*
Week Three:
Individual Tutorial (1 hour) Literary Salon
Week Four:
Editing time with Writing Buddy – no class*
Week Five:
Editing time with Writing Buddy – no class*
Week Six:
“Wordcraft” Seminar: “Idolect” (2 hours)
Week Seven:
Workshop: Developing Writing Practice (4 hours)
Literary Salon
Week Eight:
“Wordcraft” Seminar: Implication (2 hours)
Week Nine:
Workshop – Fine Tuning and Editing (4 hours)
Week Ten:
“Wordcraft”: Thinking about the Imagination (2 hours)
Literary Salon – student led
Week Eleven:
Workshop: Making Plans, Telling Stories
Week Twelve:
Final remarks
* nb when no classes are scheduled, students are expected to meet with their Writing Buddies and/or the group to appraise their work and develop exercises set in Workshops.
Work throughout the Semester is aimed towards refining and polishing your writing in hand and developing self-starting techniques so that you are able to manage it in your own time. By the end of the Semester you will be more efficient at editing your own work, defining its worth and its particularities, and seeing it in an objective setting.
To this end, as with “Creating Writing”, assessment comprises both submission of creative work and an essay reflecting how that work sits within a cultural and literary context – and breaks down as follows:
To be submitted at the end of Semester:
Key texts:
Other important books:
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