A life of words

Everything you write is creative

What this isn't

This isn’t going to tell you how to write 5,000 words a day, how to become a millionaire author, hot to plot and plan whatever it is you want to write, or even where to put commas.

The aim is to get you writing freely and confidently and not worrying about where the next word is coming from.

Whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction, a report, a letter or even your CV, we want the flow of words to be automatic so that your brain can work out the content.

It sounds a tall order, but writing easily and creatively is within everyone’s grasp – you just need the confidence to put the words on paper.

More words than you can imagine

I was supposed to go to university and study computer programming, but I fell out of love with maths and physics and got myself a job as an apprentice journalist on a local newspaper. In my mind it was a temporary position until I decided what I really wanted to do.

Famous last words. I enjoyed being a journalist, I had some excellent mentors and, surprisingly, I loved writing. I loved it to the point that I started writing and selling short stories to women’s magazines and evening newspapers. But that wasn’t a career and I moved to London working in production on a national weekly and filling in my spare time with free-lance photography and journalism.

Then I needed a mortgage and had to get proper money for a proper job. I lasted two years as a deputy editor of a national magazine before my next incarnation.

I switched from journalism to public relations for a multi-national until being head-hunted by an advertising agency. Still writing, but now more formal reports and proposals alongside the creativity of ad campaigns.

For our clients I wrote monthly business and technology magazines, press releases, instruction manuals, brochures, leaflets, tv and radio commercials, corporate video scripts.

In my spare time I helped community groups set up newspapers, I took poetry into pubs and got all sorts of weird stuff down on paper.

And then… I got bored with promotion, slipped back into free-lancing as a copywriter and got myself a degree in English and Philosophy.

After a dalliance with education there was no way I wanted to go back to agency work , so trained and qualified as an English teacher in a school for teenagers. I thought I’d mastered writing, but here were new challenges. Not only did you have to pitch your words and ideas to a new generation, you had to get those students to embrace words, to enjoy them. You needed to convince adolescents not only to write, but they had things to write about, things they needed to say. Tap into this rich vein and they are ready to embrace the rigours of exams and the compulsory Shakespeare.

Twenty years on and a couple of novels later, plus plenty of short stories and 500-word snippets, I see an explosion in those self-help books that are going to get you to write a novel. Many are excellent as they delve deep into character and plot, epublishing and marketing…

None that I’ve seen help you get started. A novel is a huge project. The number of words is staggering not to mention the complexities of managing the timelines, the narration, the development of the plot, the growth of the characters…

And too many people haven’t written anything serious since school. Firstworks is a way to re-discover your talent and with it a confident way to use words.

I was supposed to go to university and study computer programming, but I fell out of love with maths and physics and got myself a job as an apprentice journalist on a local newspaper. In my mind it was a temporary position until I decided what I really wanted to do.
Famous last words. I enjoyed being a journalist, I had some excellent mentors and, surprisingly, I loved writing. I loved it to the point that I started writing and selling short stories to women’s magazines and evening newspapers. But that wasn’t a career and I moved to London working in production on a national weekly and filling in my spare time with free-lance photography and journalism.
Then I needed a mortgage and had to get proper money for a proper job. I lasted two years as a deputy editor of a national magazine before my next incarnation.
I switched from journalism to public relations for a multi-national until being head-hunted by an advertising agency. Still writing, but now more formal reports and proposals alongside the creativity of ad campaigns.
For our clients I wrote monthly business and technology magazines, press releases, instruction manuals, brochures, leaflets, tv and radio commercials, corporate video scripts.
In my spare time I helped community groups set up newspapers, I took poetry into pubs and got all sorts of weird stuff down on paper.