Course Information Olvar Wood onLine is organised into various chapters, with each chapter a little more challenging and intensive than the one before. For a full course outline, click on the course title or image below, or go straight to OWL to enrol now. Introduction Sampler Course Fees: FREE CHAPTER ONE     Playing with Prose Fees: $50.00   Reading for Writers Fees: $100.00   Playing with Poetry Fees: $50.00 CHAPTER TWO     Fiction Fees: $295.00   Poetry Fees: $295.00   Non-Fiction Fees: $295.00 CHAPTER THREE     Nature Writing Fees: $395.00   Biography Fees: $395.00   Writing for Children Fees: $395.00         Crime Writing Fees: $295.00

A Writing Life At Olvar Wood, we believe that there are three key elements to a writer's practice: reading, writing and reflection. The three aspects overlap and interact: together they form a dynamic and stimulating foundation for a writing life. READING For a writer, reading is as essential as breathing. Reading like a writer is a critical, engaged and open-ended process. The skills of reading as a writer are more complex than those required for more casual types of reading - like reading 'just' for pleasure - and are subtly differrent to the skills of reading to interpret a text, like a critic or English-lit academic. Reading like a writer means reading in order to learn more about how a text is put together: the craft of writing. WRITING Writing brings together a combination of skills and impulses: creativity, determination, intelligence, playfulness, courage and imagination. Being a writer, means being mindful of the influence and importance of each of these aspects of your practice. It involves writing both for practice and for publication. Writing for pleasure - to play and explore - as well as writing to meet a deadline or get published. Being a writer means understanding that - like musicians and sportspeople - it is necessary to practice your craft regularly in order to improve your skills. Developing a thoughtful, self-aware and reflexive writing process improves your productivity, the quality of the writing you produce, and your sense of personal and professional achievement. REFLECTING Being a writer also requires a thoughtful and meaningful engagement with the world of writing. This element of our writing and teaching philosophy recognises that reflecting on ideas around the practice of writing – including issues such as publication, ethics, politics, diverse notions of creativity and artistic practice, and so on – is an essential part of a writer's life. As part of each of our courses, we invite you to reflect not just on what you write, but how you write, and why, and for whom. What you believe are the purposes of writing in the world, both for yourself and for other writers, and for readers. Our goal is to help you develop a coherent understanding of what you do when you write.   Coming Soon Exegesis Workshop Speculative Fiction Historical Fiction Food Writing Previous Participants Said: "I had a wonderful time, learned heaps (thank you!) and am working towards doing more." "It has been an enlivening journey for me, pinpointing areas where more attention is needed along with the pleasure of trying out ideas, techniques and mini versions of genres. I found the course reading material stimulating and often thought-provoking" "The thorough feedback for the assignments in particular has really helped me."