Online creative writing course

[ComradeJing]

I'm thinking of doing an online creative writing course as there is nothing in my area. I've looked at theOU one which looks good but interested in other opinions or suggestions or feedback.

I loved writing but have fallen out of the habit over the past 8 years. I want something to jolt me back and I need structure to do that.

ou one here

[belledechocchipcookie]

I've not done one but if I did it would be the OU course. I've heard some good feedback about it on here and have seen others that charge an absolute fortune, stay away from these.

[Punkatheart]

I have done an OU course on Creative Writing - it was excellent. If you want structure, homework and also the cyber company of other writers, this would be perfect!

[ComradeJing]

Great, thank you both.

[Bluemoonrising]

I'm currently halfway through A174 - the OU 'start writing fiction' short course. It's fab, great community spirit, lots of feedback on exercises. I would recommend it.

[deedledum]

I did this about 18 months ago, really loved it and it kick started me into writing committedly and with focus: now 65k words into my first novel. If you are in Scotland you can apply for an ILA to fund it. Go for it!

[ComradeJing]

Fantastic. I'm going to sign up for it after DH's next pay day.

Thanks again.

[CassiePalmer]

I didn't do A174 but I've just finished A215 which I think expands on A174, the OU are really good and very helpful with everything.
I now have more belief in myself as a writer.

[Frizzbonce]

I tutor the A215 and A363 (more advanced) course on the OU and yes they are good - partly because you're expected to dive in and do all kinds of writing, fiction, poetry, life writing - everything except scripts, but having an online forum of your peers is also very useful. I've found that the students who really progress are the ones who are brave enough to post their work for feedback.

The London School of Journalism also does good online courses if you're not interested in the academic side.

[chebella]

argh! i'd love to do wither of these but it won't let me register - it says
" Sorry...You are not able to register for courses online while signed in with this OU Computer User Name (OUCU). If you are already a student, please sign out and then sign in again with your student OUCU and password.

If you don't have a student OUCU, just sign out, use the back button on your browser. Then you will be able to register online."

i try to do what it says but this is the only answer i get.

Then, when i just sent an email qurying it, it was returned to my inbox as undeliverable because the recipient's inbox was full! annoying or what?! maybe it wasn't meant to be...

[chebella]

either not wither....

[Bluemoonrising]

Just phone them, they are really helpful on the phone, and I'm sure they'll sort ot our for you.

[chebella]

thanks blue - are you a City fan? if so, good on you - me too!

[strawberryjelly]

I'd recommend the OCA courses- starting to write is the first one.

[woollyideas]

I've done the OU A215 course and thought it was fantastic. However, I didn't like (or find useful) posting my work online for other students to give feedback. I'd been to a writing class before at another university and was used to giving feedback, face to face, in a group.

On the OU course we were given no guidelines for feeding back on each others' work, so some people were making comments along the lines of 'I really didn't like it...' without saying why. On my other course we'd been briefed on what to look for specifically (plot movement, characterisation, dialogue, etc.), and how to give the proverbial 'shit sandwich' if we needed to say something negative. The emphasis was on looking for something positive to say, while being honest about what didn't work. I found this very useful, but the online nature of the feedback from other OU students was another matter.

I did not find it useful to have someone say he thought a character in one of my short stories was 'ridiculous' without being able to say why. (Incidentally the tutor gave me 94% for that story so it can't have been that bad!)

Like a lot of online forums you get people who are more active than others and I found that some people (just like here on MN!) were frequent and vociferous posters and had 'fans' who treated their words as if they were gold dust, while other posters were virtually ignored.

In the end I only gave my work to the tutor and trusted critics that I knew from my previous course. I felt that if you weren't a confident writer the online feedback might be seriously demoralising. Frankly it pissed me off when people gave ill-considered or poor feedback. It's worse than nothing at all.

I loved the Saturday schools with the OU. Although not compulsory, I just couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't want to take advantage of such a fantastic resource. They were brilliant.

I'm planning to do the Level 3 OU creative writing course very soon but will probably stay away from the online feedback again.

Sorry this is a bit long!

[CassiePalmer]

If you were getting unconstructive feedback on the A215 course then it should have been dealt with, there were guidelines about constructive feedback (mind I've just finished it so things may have changed if you did it in previous years).
I didn't put much work for feedback though, my tutor group was very quiet and we did have someone giving unconstructive feedback who the tutor tried to deal with and she took it badly and it led to bad feeling in the group so our group never really got going. Which was a shame but the course is still worth it and I got excellent feedback from my tutor. I didn't much like giving other feedback either tbh.
I did the course to gain confidence to put my work forward for publishing and I still feel I gained that despite the lack of critique from others. I'd still like to find a decent group to critique with though.

[brockthebadger]

I am 2 weeks into the OU A174 Start Writing Fiction course which is 10 weeks long. It's really interesting reading other people's experiences of the OU courses here. I haven't written for years and felt very nervous about the thought of posting my writing in a public form. However having paid my £175, it feels a bit pointless to then chicken out of something potentially so valuable. I can already see what someone said about her course; in the Student Cafe, there are already the 'regulars' who are very vocal, but the size of it is quite overwhelming. My tutor group consists of 22 of us, and it's dead. Only about a quarter have submitted work online. No-one is giving feedback (and there are helpful guidelines about how to critique). I have made 2 attempts to see if anyone would like to get things going within our tutor group forum, to a resounding silence. Is this normal with online groups d'you think? Or am I either just a) impatient, maybe it will warm up, or b) unlucky! Of course I can submit to the Student Cafe, but there is definitely the danger of being lost due to sheer volume or being ignored. I'm wondering if there would be anything to be gained from using a totally different online writing group in conjunction with the course, to gain that feedback. Maybe this seems weird posting this here but I'm feeling bit frustrated by the lack of energy in my tutor group and would like to feel that I've made the most of this course.

[threeisthemagicnumber]

This is all really interesting. I need to do a couple of courses to finish my Lit Degree and have been thinking about doing the Creative Writing Level 2 (and then possibly level 3).

I did A174 and also an evening class with Oxford University Continuing Education Dept (who do online courses as well which tend to focus on specific aspects of creative writing) so I'm not sure whether doing another writing course is just procrastinating. I enjoyed both but they were faily undemanding in terms of time.

Can anyone tell me what it was like doing lots of different forms of writing because, if I'm honest, this is one of the things that puts me off. I'm not sure whether I'll just find it a slog writing poetry etc when that's not my area of interest or whether it's useful to explore other forms of writing.

[brockthebadger]

Hi threeisthemagicnumber. How interesting to read that you've done A174. How did you find it? Having had a moan about lack of responses in my tutor group, 2 people now have which is great.

I've read reviews on the OU website about levels 2 and 3. Have you seen them? They're quite helpful I think. It seems that lots of people have reservations about poetry etc and then have been pleasantly surprised when they get stuck in.

[threeisthemagicnumber]

Brockthebadge
I enjoyed it - I think I took it in the first year it was offered so there were teething problems. The tutor was good and I got a good result. I didn't manage to keep the momentum going after the course but I suspect that was because of where I was in my life at the time. I found the Oxford Uni course really got me writing but much of that was because I was in a room full of people and we were producing things for each other to critique.

I'm glad you've got some response from the group - it really helps if you can find even a couple of people for support and feedback. I did A174 whilst doing a Level 3 so I probably didn't interact very much with the group because my focus was on the other course.

I am totally undecided to luckily have a few months before I need to make any decisions. I want to finish my degree and I want to write but I don't know if I want to combine the two. Am a bit about it all.

[threeisthemagicnumber]

Oh and good luck with the course.

[FlyingAardvark]

threeisthemagicnumber - When I did level 2 I was very apprehensive about doing different kinds of writing, I hadn't done any poetry since I was 12 at school and had never tried life writing, I ended up my best mark in life writing and my tutor really encouraged me to do more with the story I wrote.
Poetry I did find hard, for my assignment I did three poems and my tutor gave mixed views, one was brilliant, one was good, one was terrible. I did enjoy trying it though and I would say it's helped my writing overall, there ar some good books out there to help, Stephen Fry's book helped me a lot (can't remember the name of it).
It was still fiction I enjoyed doing most, my main problem is I like writing novel length stories and I found it really hard to do short stories but I did get better and the final assignent allowed me to do two opening chapters of a novel.
I can't fault the course at all, I had been writing for years but lacked confidence in myself, the main help was the first few weeks in learning techniques to get ideas flowing and help with creative language and structure.

[threeisthemagicnumber]

Thanks Flying That's really helpful. I think I'm going to go for it!

[brockthebadger]

Threeisthemagicnumber, thank you for your reply. It was interesting to hear that you took A174 in its first year. My tutor group is coming to life now, I despaired too soon.
How exciting to have made a decision. I hope you enjoy it and I'd love to hear how you get on. I might have a go when I've finished this one. Would you be starting in October? Anyway good luck too.