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 critical skills of reading to interpret a text. 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.

 

2010 OWL Course Calendar Start Any Time: Book Club Playing with Poetry Playing with Prose 18 January - 9 April The Writing Life Fiction Poetry Writing for Children Biography 10 May - 30 July The Writing Life Fiction Non-Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Nature Writing 23 August - 12 November The Writing Life Non-Fiction Poetry Writing for Children Biography

 

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."