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Writers and poets are often thought of as solitary folk hiding away in a  lonely garret .  O.K.  Let me tell you, it’s a myth.  Unless one has the circumstances and the drive to be a full time writer, most of us are regular folks who try to squeeze in a little scribbling between work, chores, family and numerous other responsibilities.  With so many balls to keep in the air how do we find time to switch off from the mundane and tune in to our creativity? 

Last weekend my husband Tony and I went to a poetry writing course just 7 miles away from our home at the Tŷ Newydd Writers Centre in North Wales www.tynewydd.org   It may be just 7 miles away from our home, yes, but we might as well have been a million miles away.  We switched off our mobile phones and allowed the atmosphere of the beautiful historical house and grounds to help us forget the outside world  and connect with our inner voices.  It was amazingly stimulating to spend time with our tutors, 2 very talented contemporary writers and 12 other people from all different backgrounds, each with their own unique voice.  We were set a number of exercises and hey presto, words began to flow and the feedback from the whole group was invaluable.  Some of my work needs a little polishing, it rarely comes out fully formed but I was quite pleased with what I had achieved.  Now words are buzzing around my head so  I have a pen and paper by my bed, my PC on in the study and a my laptop on on the lounge most of the time too,  so that if I should find a nice word or phrase I can capture it before it escapes me.

If you want to write but were never confident enough to try, or you are a writer who is stuck, try to find a writer’s group, a class or a writers course.  If there isn’t one, ask around and form your own.  You’d be surprised how many people are secret writers.  Courses are also available online which are great to learn the technicalities but you can’t beat contact with real people.  Meanwhile try to read a variety of genres.  Observing people and situations and even reading a newspaper can be a great source of ideas to write about.  While you are visiting our web-site why not sign up for our newsletter and go to our ’submit your stuff page’ and look at our submission guidelines and up-coming themes.  You never know you might surprise your self.  We are looking forward to hearing from you. 

Posted by Karen Harvey in Lifestyle |

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.