Thsi doesn't seem expensive for one to one attention to me. I get a darn sight more than £15 for an hour teaching a group some basic computer skills and a friend of mine charges £10 an hour for on to one tuition with children doing the eleven plus. Paying close attention to an individual's writing demands more thought than either of those.

And if that attention was as productive as Anna's was when I asked her for some help with my synopsis, I would think it was very good value. Sharon

I agree, Sharon. This is a damned good idea and, to my mind, very reasonably priced.

I enrolled on a local evening class a couple of years ago. The tutor was good but he had no ambition to write a novel – in fact we discovered on the first night that his speciality was non-fiction. Of the original ten starters only five of us came back on the second evening. Two wanted to write TV scripts, one wrote long and terminally boring poetry and insisted on reading it v e r y slowly, and another had decided to use writing as a form of therapy to work off her massive anger towards her ex-husband who had dumped her ten years ago. And then there was me, wondering what the hell I was doing there when I could be at home with a bottle of wine and my laptop.

The course limped into a second term but, inevitably, it folded. I foolishly assumed the experience was not typical of evening classes and enrolled on one in a nearby town (along with one of the script-writers and the angsty wife). The tutor was a journalist who also liked poetry but had absolutely no interest in fiction. Almost the first thing he said was that he wasn’t intending to cover novel-writing… ‘because none of us want to write novels, do we.’

By this time I’d spent around £120 and achieved nothing. Which, for me, puts the Wordschool course fees into perspective.

Good luck with it.

Dee.

The school is a logical progression for the WriteWords site and I'm sure there is a market out there. It is a good way for those experts, not financially involved in the site to get a return on their (time) investment.

Personally (and very selfishly) I hope that the experts will still be available to comment on our work on the site, as we still need you too!

Good luck with the project

Elspeth

Dee, we were posting at the same time. I was lamenting being so far away and not having any human writing contact and I read (I think it was) Becca's interview which said more or less the same thing as you have proved. i felt a lot better and was (and still am) very glad to have found WriteWords.
Elspeth

And e.g., There's no reason why it should take the site eggs away from criting in the normal way, I'd be lonely otherwise myself, and when I actually get round to writing something else again, I'll want that crited too.
Becca.

I think the price is very reasonable for a sustained course of one-to-one tutorials. Most tutorials of this nature cost between £40 and £55 per tutorial and over 10 sessions would add up to between £400 and £550. We should also take into consideration the initial readings of the poems and the development of the programme of feedback sessions and exercises that will be best suited to the individual each tutor is working with. This takes time for the tutor to think about and develop.

Participants are asked to allow between 2-4 hours a week, which is the equivalent of a group workshop - which often cost up to £30 each, depending on the tutor, and which has usually 14+ other participants in the group.

I think we also have to think that these writers are taking time off of their own work in order to help others develop theirs. As writers, we all understand the pressures of writing, but these pressures are slightly alleviated if we know we can afford to have the time to write. What better way than to support writers earn a living by helping other writers - it just makes sense! I'd love to think that people who come through WriteWords and then the writingschool site, would be able to go on and get published widely and then be able to get paid jobs (if they wanted to) teaching other writiers.

I'm happy to pay for tutorials and courses with writers that I know will help me develop my writing. But I will also say, that occasionally I need to apply for bursaries to help me do this, and maybe this is something Writewords needs to be thinking about. Or maybe an instalment plan - at The Poetry School, small group seminars are a similar price and paid for in two instalments - it helps people spread the cost.

The Arts Council offer grants to individuals to develop their writing, so may that's something we could all look into.

cheers

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One point for Olebut. The average pocket money nowadays is about £10 a week. I think registration on this site is about £20 so young people don't necessarily need to be excluded, they could save up, like we used to have to when we were kids.

I do have worries about people (not just children) who can't afford access to the internet but I think it's a different issue (connected but different). I think one solution is that libraries should all have free internet access and computer use (not all of them do). But if people are having to go out to libraries to use computers to work on this site to develop their poems (which they probably wouldn't really), they'd be better off going to a local writers group or courses. This, of course, needs more thinking about.

I think the point is this is about choice: a facility has been offered and if people feel it's valuable to them, they'll find a way to do it.

I do agree with you that we lose the interaction of other people in online classes and website such as Write Words. I suppose there are pros and cons to everything.

cheers

<Added>

pps - sorry one more thing.

I'm not a wordschool tutor, so I can say these things relatively unbiased! But I deal with writers and tutors daily, so I know how much hard work it is not only for the tutors, but for the administrators too.

Hi David,

I do like the sound of the courses. However, as money may be quite tight it would have to wait a little bit. But best of luck with it I may be back!

Sue