Horses for Courses – "Write a novel in a month" in Richmond

Nightschool. Brings back memories of sitting in tiny chairs on a cold winter’s evening wondering why on earth you bothered as various social outcasts try to strike up a conversation with you. However, I was amazed at the range of interesting courses at a local adult education college.

Richmond Adult Community College has buildings in both Richmond town centre and on the outskirts of Twickenham. I’d been along recently as part of my School Governor training and had picked up an A5 course guide to browse while waiting for my session to start. I was astounded at the range of courses – and also at the relatively low cost.

So I booked onto a couple. There’s a day course on “Learn to massage with a friend” – where you must enrol as part of a pair on a Saturday in June – with an EU price of £40. I’m not telling who my “friend” is – that’s a secret. I’ve also committed a couple of Saturdays to learning about the joys of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – and whilst I’m no geek, nor a slouch when it comes to technology things – I thought it would be a cost effective way to do some work related learning and for two days it’s considerably cheaper at £70 than most commercial courses. Let me know if you are interested in how they go – from a course selection perspective of course.

But last Saturday I embarked on a project that has been longer on my wish list than “thin thighs”. I spent a couple of hours with nine other delegates – a couple of mums, some mainstream magazine journalists and a few others with undisclosed backgrounds – on the first part (of five) on “Write a novel in a month” (£70). The course leader has a masters degree in creative writing and a novel in the late stages of editing. Encouraging.

We were given a small handbook containing all the advice and guidance we would be working through over the next five weeks and a fearsome looking contract with ourselves committing to write 1,600 words EVERY DAY. That way, at the course end, we will have 50,000 words. It is at this point that I realised it is “Write a novel in a month” and not “Write a brilliant novel in a month that publishers will be biting off your hand to publish” course. I can do the quantity but it’s the quality I worry about.

Anyway, after some introductions and basic instruction – using Cinderella as an example to demonstrate Aristotle’s incline - we were given 15 minutes and told to start writing. Just like that. Guess I should have given a bit more thought to what my novel was going to be about. But seeing everyone else unpack their laptops (I’d left my tech kit at home and was armed with an attractive notebook and one of my favourite pens) and start typing I suspended my disbelief and started writing.

I was interested to learn that whilst most others had achieved an astonishing 300-400 words in their 15 minutes, I was class leader with around 600. Yes, but no one has read it and it may be complete garbage – can’t see eloquent and prosaic prose being produced at that rate. Back to the quantity/quality question. Some more discussion about different styles of novel and we were given another 15 minutes to write away.

And then we were dispatched to attempt our first week of producing 1,600 words a day. Mmmn. So far I managed to do 9,000 words on my first novel concept. Then I had a day off (naughty) and then I’ve done another 2,000 on a second novel concept having decided that the first was just too dull. OK. So it’s not quite as I had hoped, but I am writing and looks like I’ll have something at the end of the month. Unless, of course, tomorrow – when she talks about characterisation – I realise I need to start all over again.

Then of course, once my masterpiece is written and published and I am enjoying a smarter life than J K Rowling, I will have the time to enrol on some more of those courses – I’ve always wanted to speak better Italian and the cookery classes look good too. And then, naturally, I’ll be looking to banish those fat thighs with some dance classes.