Gladfic: Writing Fiction with Vanessa Gebbie

Vanessa Gebbie’s popular course returns for another year! Have you always wanted to write but never found the time? Maybe you have an unfinished novel that needs a fresh start? With Vanessa and a group of other likeminded writers, explore the elements that work together to create fiction. Spend time in a variety of workshops, learning where and how to find inspiration, how to create vibrant characters, voices and settings. Experiment with poetry and explore ways of shaping and reshaping your work. You’ll also have plenty of time to put into practice the new skills you have learned, and to discuss your own work and process with Vanessa in a series of one-to-ones. With an evening of readings with a special guest writer to be announced.

Vanessa is a novelist, a writer of award-winning short fictions of all lengths, a poet, editor and tutor. Author of 10 books, including Short Circuit: Art of the Short Story (Salt), she has taught for The Word Factory, The Arts Council, New Writing South, The Arvon Foundation, London's Spread the Word, and for writing organisations in Ireland, Italy, Sweden and Austria among many others. 

The course will be informal but very focussed, as you shed all the other roles you have to play, keeping a firm hold on your writer’s hat. Using examples by well-known writers, explore all the fascinating elements that work together to create marvellous fiction. You’ll spend the mornings in a variety of workshops, exploring where and how to find inspiration, how to create vibrant characters, voices and settings. Experiment with poetry and explore ways of shaping and reshaping your work. In the afternoons you will have plenty of time to practice the new skills you have learned, and to discuss your own work and process with Vanessa in a series of private one-to ones. Or, of course, there are the walks, the gloriously welcoming Gladstone Room, or the library itself to inspire you. And in the evenings, after supper, it’s back to work again with the team, as not a moment is wasted to strengthen you as a writer.  

By the end of the course you will, most importantly, understand yourself better as a creative being. The short story writers will, having written and edited several new pieces of work, have at least a few pieces of short short fiction almost ready to go. Certainly, you will have created new characters, new voices, new, fresh vibrant settings which you can revisit and deepen in the coming weeks and months. For those with lengthier projects, you will have enriched your work-in-progress, and with Vanessa’s support, nudged it on to the next stage.

Click here to view the full programme.

Residential prices start from £590, non-residential from £400. Discount rates for clergy and students apply.

For more information or to book, please call 01244 532350 or email [email protected].