The academic year begins again

It's always such a buzz when the list of names arrives. Eighteen strangers, all with their individual histories, horror stories, happy times and hopes. The course I teach is managed online and there's a lot of technical 'stuff' to get through before the real studying can begin. Sometimes, students can be put off by this, yet, year after year, these same students look back with satisfaction not only for having passed the course but for having passed the ICT initiation, too!

Creative writing. Navel gazing? A way of making millions? A desire to express the thing that hurts the most (and maybe expunge it)? With creative writing courses so widespread now, the odds of all these students achieving fame are remote yet some will reach it. For the others, creative writing won't pay any bills but it will bring rewards and riches. The non-financial kind. The most important kind. The 'human' kind. Like all creative pursuits, writing should first and foremost be a way for all of us as individuals to explore this experience of being alive and being human, here, now, in this place and time. No other person has the same experience or the same view of the world and that makes each of those eighteen people whose names are on my list of new A215 students unique. I'm looking forward to reading about their life, experience and imagination over the next eight or nine months and to helping them take a step nearer achieving their writing dream.