Tuesday 12 January 2016

Bea-ing Tutored

I have some exciting news to report this week. I am a runner-up in The Writers Bureau 2016 Writer of the Year awards! You can find the link here.

I became a student of The Writers Bureau by chance. In November 2013 I entered a competition on their website to write a 500 word factual piece about Guy Fawkes. I won, and my prize was a free subscription to their Non-Fiction Writing course.

Completing the various assignments and taking on board the feedback from my tutor (the excellent Simon Whaley) has helped to improve my writing skills, not just limited to non-fiction writing. I am grateful to The Writers Bureau, and to Simon for his patience.


But being taught how to write is not enough. It has to be more than a passive exercise. The challenge is to apply those lessons: to write and submit, to accept the inevitable rejections, then to write and submit again.

The great thing is, the more I write, the more I learn. And if I have fun and earn some cash whilst I’m doing it, then what’s not to like?

17 comments:

  1. That's really good news. Well done, and such good advice from Simon. Those last two paragraphs should be everybody's mantra.

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  2. Well done you! I agree Simon is a great tutor too.
    It's a win next for you then Bea... :-)

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  3. Congratulations. But remember ... you did all the hard work ;-)

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    1. Not quite, Simon, not quite. I couldn't have done as much without you.

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  4. Congratulations!

    I agree - taking part in lessons is a start but it isn't enough to make us writers. For that we need to do a fair bit of actual writing.

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    1. Thanks, Patsy. How often do we need to be told? Write, just write.

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  5. Well done Bea. You deserve your success and are an inspiration. Good to actually know someone who is doing well.

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  6. Well done, Bea. Saw the Writer of the Year results in an email and clicked on your blog link. I read your story in People's Friend, well done, I understand it is hard to get one accepted there, and then I found I had read your alphabet competition winner in Writer's Forum. Really good to learn more about you.

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    1. Thank you, Carolgaynor. Very kind of you to seek me out.

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  7. Well done Fabulous news!

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  8. Oops I meant to add that I agree, experience and practice are so important. Rejection being one of the hardest tests to vercome.

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    1. Thank you, Madeleine. I'm not sure we ever get over rejection, but then why should we? If the work we send out isn't important to us, why would we have committed to them. But we must keep on at it or else we write only for ourselves.

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