The team that created WriteWords have today launched a new site - http://www.wordschool.co.uk - one-to-one online writing courses in a variety of genres.

The idea is to offer something for writers who want to take their studies a stage further, via a one to one email correspondence course with your writing tutor.

Wordschool tutors include several WriteWords site experts, meaning you can get to know them on WW before decided to take up a course.

Check it out!

Sounds fascinating. Santa please note: I want one for Christmas.
x
tc

Brilliant idea!! Well done, WriteWords!

LoL

A
xxx

good idea but sorry much to costly for a 10 week course I can enrol locally and get excellent tuiton for £40 if I desired it.

equally some writing courses are available funded by acet with good tuiton for free or at minimal cost £3.50 per session.

and whilst I accept being able to do it on line is very convenient you lose the interface that more traditional courses offer and the interaction with other students.

I have to agree with olebut, it os a great idea nice addition for members, but far too pricey.

Thanks for the comments. It's obviously not going to be for everyone, but it does compare very favourably in terms of price to most other online writing courses - bear in mind you're getting one on one attention, these are not group courses.

The other enormous advantage is that you not only have a very experienced selection of tutors, but you can actually see many of them interacting and commenting on work here at WW, so you know exactly what you're signing up for.

Our original reasoning behind the site was having seen the sums charged by other sites, which seem to be run by 'Aunty Joan' whose qualifications were little more than 'I enjoy writing', we felt that having such a talented team of experts here at WW, it was time to pool them and offer a reasonably priced service of individual tuition. With the transparency of everything that goes on here on WW you should know exactly what you're getting before you sign up.

David,

Another great resource. WriteWords just keeps on getting better and better.

Nell.

David with respect the justififcation for charging the same as other sites is no justification.

In reality it can not be one on one because it is on line and you denegrate many other fine courses, the fact that the experts are good may or may not be relevent after all at £150 per 10 weeks they damned well should be.

I make no apologies for standing by my original posting 'too expensive' especially bearing in mind we already pay for the site and without which the on-line school would probably not have been viable.

s


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Ps sorry Nell I tend to disagree, at the moment it just seems to be getting more and more commercial and expensive which is a shame.

I accept that you can't expect people to do something for nothing but there is a limit, we already exclude many young people who are the future because they can't afford the subscription what next?

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One can study for a part time BA in Creative Writing with superb tutors ( offering one on one support ) for about £800 per year Ok over several years and one gets a BA(hons) at the end together with superb tuition. If you are on low income the LEA will pay 2/3rds of your fees and the University usually have a bursary scheme to cover the rest. You recieve excellant tuition and can study on a distant learning basis if you cant travel OK perhaps a differnet style of course but I thought perhaps it puts things into persepctive.

David I'm sorry you feel so negative about what we hope should be an exciting new option for writers.

I'm not sure what you mean about the WW site getting more and more commercial. We just added a bunch of new features including the showcase and haven't charged any more for them. Wordschool will actually be of very little commercial benefit to WW. We take a small administration fee per course, but the majority of the course fee goes to the tutor. It works out at a very modest hourly rate for a personal tutor.


Anyway, as they say, horses for courses...

I don't think the cost of this is at all unrealistic if you compare with crit services. I've sent poems for paid-for crits and the going rate seems to be about £40 upwards for between 40 -100 lines of poetry. That gets you ONE response, not an interactive discourse. So compared to that, the £150 is not a bad deal at all, and I'm certain most WW Experts will give more than your money's worth.

When you think, (at least for the poetry one) you get 10 sessions, each giving 1 hour of the Experts time, that's not an unreasonable rate, My hairdresser charges me three times that much!
I would certainly go for it.

We have to recognise our Experts have skills and experience that can be of invaluable use to us if we want to take our writing further. We get a fair amount of that, (more than we pay for, I think) from our WW interraction. It's only fair that to get more access to that, we pay a realistic rate.
x
tc

David I am not negative but expressing a view, I am sorry that you respond so defensively and can not accept that not everybody will agree with you. It is easy to try to justify something by accusing those that disagree with you of being negative but that does not constitute a valid response.

you so far have said nothing which encourages me to change my mind but equally it is your site so you will do what you wish.

david

I'm interested. I would like to take up the creative writing option, but the price is out of my league. The kids want a christmas tree this year - that's me wiped out!

Maybe in the new year though, unless I can sell a story

Colin M

I am now beginning to wonder if the lack of response I have had lately is related to the instigation of this new site.

To me, being busy, having to work and be a mum, the convenience of an online course does it for me. OK, I could, one could, attend an evening class, but on a cold winter night, the prospect of getting in my car to go an sit in an overlit school class room (at my suppertime!), drink coffee out of a polystyrene cup, doesn't fill me with joy. £15 a week seems reasonable. But, we are all different. Thank goodness for having options. I think I'd give it a go.

I'm with Elsie here: I like my home comforts too much to risk walking out of the door in winter. Evening classes are about as attractive as the offer of a root canal. But as the consensus appears to be that the price is high - is there any chance that it might be reconsidered?

Colin