Creative writing course: Isle of Wight

Who hasn’t dreamed of penning a novel? Creative writing provides a release for the imagination – and, occasionally, financial rewards for the lucky few who hit upon a bestseller. Courses have been on the up since the University of East Anglia introduced its MA in creative writing more than 40 years ago. Now 90-plus British universities run similar programmes.

However, fiction courses don’t have to be academic – plenty exist to promote writing for pleasure. And there are some great opportunities to try your hand at short story, poetry or novel writing around the coast, where the natural beauty provides the perfect setting for inspiration to strike.

Choosing a course with a published writer, particularly if they work in the genre you’d like to pursue, can help you get started. Advice on structure, plot, characterisation and atmosphere can help you develop your own voice, while feedback from others provides encouragement. I’ve written a novel and screenplay, but want to ignite the creative spark for novel number two.

Day one

6pm Arrival and a beach
On arriving at The Grange – a lovely secluded hotel near Shanklin – I walk through the garden down to the sea. I ponder the theme of the writing course: ‘A Life Full of Stories’. We’ve been asked to bring along a few photographs to illustrate events and people from our past.

7.30pm Dinner chit-chat
Back at The Grange, we have a three-course dinner based on good country cooking, and meet our fellow course attendees. There are three men and eight women, aged from late 30s to 70s – mothers, a teacher, a lawyer, a gym owner. We discuss why we are there: reasons vary from ‘I’m writing a book’ to ‘I’m blocked’ and ‘I’ve never written before’. Amanda Smyth then introduces herself. She wrote the novel 'Black Rock' (Serpent’s Tail, £7.99) and in 2009 was included on Waterstones’ ‘one to watch’ list. She says: ‘We all have unique stories since we are the only ones who have lived our lives. The purpose of this weekend is to let those stories come out.’ First bit of homework: to write every morning for ten minutes about anything – a diary, dreams or stream of consciousness.

Day two

10.30am We start to write
After dutifully writing in bed for ten minutes, followed by a breakfast of fruit salad, poached egg, bacon and croissants, I join the others, who are gathered with notepads and pens. Amanda asks who did the homework and all hands go up. She explains, ‘These exercises give you the opportunity to write without analysing, allowing your imagination to deliver.’ And so we begin. We write our response to the sentences ‘I wish I had said…’ or ‘I went outside and there coming towards me…’ The results are surprising. Much laughter as Kate Baynes reads her comic piece about a dragon sightseer in her home city of Paris. ‘I asked him for a light. He was happy to oblige.’ Meanwhile, Amanda has stuck quotes around the room and laid out some objects as prompts – a ring, flip-flops, a Hollywood map, an iridescent beetle and a candle. The idea is either to connect two or use one as a diving board to leap off somewhere else entirely. I choose a beetle and Groucho Marx’s quote: ‘A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.’ I find it very hard to link the two. But somehow I conjure up an old, wheelchair-bound gentleman and his dead wife in the form of a child.

12.30pm Do your homework
Amanda hands out an entry from Virginia Woolf’s 1934 diary – a beautifully descriptive piece about a rainstorm on her garden pond. The afternoon task is to use this as a model to write 150 words about the garden or the beach.

12.45pm A literary lunch
We all walk round the corner to the Vernon Cottage for a pub lunch. Then everyone disperses: for a nap, a massage, an afternoon in a deckchair. I go with course mate Linda Bateman to nearby Ventnor. We eat a Minghella ice cream, then sit, watch, listen and write our response to life on the beach.

4.30pm A piece of cake
Back to the hotel, where some cakes are laid out prior to our next session. All of us have done our writing task (except Kate, who fell asleep – perhaps dreaming of her dragon?). Now we have to read our pieces out, which is daunting but incredibly useful. We all want to hear each other’s stories, style and take on the subject. Mine is about footprints in the sand left by a man and his son – who will his son grow into? Most of us liked the Virginia Woolf extract, apart from Graeme Marsh, who couldn’t empathise with it at all – he thought it ‘girly – I couldn’t find anything to say about the garden. I mean, it’s green!’ Fortunately, the critique we receive is honest but kind. Everyone has shown they can write engagingly, that they have a voice, and any criticism is in the spirit of urging people on to greater heights.

7.30pm Still talking
We all walk up to the High Street to have dinner, either at the Thai Siam Pearl or the Purple Mango Indian restaurant. Back at The Grange afterwards, we linger, chatting on the terrace with a glass of wine. But, by 11.30pm, all is quiet. .

Day three

10.30am Stirred by a snap
Today starts the same way – with ten minutes of writing, then breakfast. Now for the photos we’ve brought with us. Revisiting events, places and people from your youth can be so emotive. Things I’d forgotten leap into focus. A childhood memory appears vivid. ‘We pile stones either side of the railway track, then lay little Timmy’s rubber duck on top of the track. We wait for the train...’

12pm Fond farewells
Before we leave, Amanda gives us an instructive exercise: to imagine our resident critic, that voice in our ear. Mine is definitely male, old and crabby! A group photo, goodbyes and it is all over. Just time for a quick crab sandwich and chips at The Fisherman’s Cottage on the Esplanade before catching the ferry. Amanda has certainly inspired the group. Linda wants to take another course to see what she can achieve in a longer time frame; Graeme feels ready to flex his muscles with fiction writing. And I have been reflecting on the old man and the five-year-old – they might inveigle themselves into a short story. But our main aims are to still that incessant inner critic, and write 500 words a day. A lesson to all embryonic writers – feed your imagination and it will grow.

Creative writing courses at The Grange cost from £75, Friday to Sunday (plus £20 for Friday dinner). The next course runs from March 9-11 2012. For info, see www.thegrangebythesea.com. Coast travelled with Wightlink Ferries from Portsmouth to Fishbourne (0871 376 1000, www.wightlink.co.uk).

How to get started
The good news is, no expensive equipment is required to start writing creatively, and there is no one, ‘right’ way to do it, either. Some people like to have hand, pen, paper contact, others write directly onto the computer. Choose whichever way suits you and enables the flow of words. As for a starting point, some people like to plot methodically, while others start with an idea, a character or a place.

More writing courses
Around the coast, also try Ty Newydd in Snowdonia, where weekend courses cost from £245 (www.tynewydd.org). In Ireland, The Creative Writer’s Workshop offers three- to four-day courses in locations such as the Aran Islands from €625 (www.thecreativewriters workshop.com). The respected Arvon Foundation runs five-day courses from £575, all of which are inland (www.arvonfoundation.org). The Skyros Centre in Greece (allied to The Grange) runs 11-day courses – sometimes hosted by Booker and Pulitzer Prize-winning writers – from £795-£995 (www.skyros.com).

Where to stay
The Grange, Shanklin, Isle of Wight (01983 867644, www.thegrangebythesea.com). The Grange is an eco-friendly country-house hotel with a terrace and gardens, and, whenever possible, organic food. The top bedrooms have sea views. There is a cosy sitting room, honesty bar and complimentary massages are available. Double B&B from £88.