Writer Andy Thatcher tells us about how a week-long course equipped him to plan his novel, direct his authorial voice and think about the market for his work.

"In the UK, there are two key players in the residential writing circuit: The Arvon Foundation (which has four centres: in Scotland, Devon, Yorkshire and Shropshire) and Ty Newydd, which has one centre in North Wales. These five centres run a program of week-long courses for roughly nine months of the year with a break over winter. The courses cover a vast array of writing styles: children’s writing, short stories, crime writing, poetry, travel writing, autobiography, even an annual song-writing week with ex-Kink Ray Davies.

They also embrace all levels of experience, from beginners to advanced courses – as well as providing at least one week per centre that isn’t tutored at all but intended as a retreat. The tutors are always drawn from writers (or industry professionals) with a strong reputation. Many are experienced teachers in their own right, many are award-winners, some are even both.

I attended a course at Ty Newydd, which is a large, old house overlooking the sea and the mountains of Snowdonia. The course was titled Advanced Fiction, which meant I had sent 2,000 words of my novel along with a synopsis prior to the course. (Booking a place was dependent on selection by the tutors.) The tutors were Patricia Dunker, lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and prize-winning novelist, and Janet Thomas, editor of the small Welsh press Honno and formerly a children’s editor for Harper Collins.

The first time I had been on one of these courses, Patricia had been a tutor, which was my reason for booking a place on this one. Ty Newydd and Arvon courses generally follow the same pattern and this was no exception. On Monday everyone arrives for dinner followed by an informal discussion with the tutors. Tuesday to Friday mornings are workshops, the afternoons given over to personal writing time and one-to-one tutorials.

On Tuesday evening, the tutors read from their own work. On Wednesday evening, a guest reader gives a talk (we were lucky enough to have Rose Tremain.) On Thursday and Friday evenings, the students read from their own work, either written on the course or previously. On any one of the evenings, except the Monday, students pitch in to cook a meal under the watchful eye of a centre manager.

In our case, the workshops were dictated by the work the tutors had read. They had drawn together common problems and set about trying to make us re-think the way we treated such issues as: narrative structure, genre, setting and getting published. Unlike previous courses, these workshops were discussion-based seminars rather than being given short writing exercises during the course of the morning. The seminars were rigorously-prepared, in-depth and to the point, with carefully-chosen examples. Patricia and Janet also worked well as a team as both had specific areas of knowledge and their own individual viewpoints.

The tutorials proved just as invaluable. Unlike other courses, each student was paired up with a tutor –(Janet, in my case), expected to attend a half-hour session each day and to provide fresh work, even if only in outline, for each tutorial. Janet was both sympathetic and challenging. I already knew that my novel had got into a bit of a mess, albeit an exciting one, so being urged to rewrite from scratch wasn’t too upsetting (other students were reduced to tears.)

With Janet’s guidance and enthusiasm, I developed a new structure and uncovered hidden aspects of my characters. But the luxury of being away from it all, being among other writers, and having the time to get your head down and work, is perhaps the biggest draw of all. I was lucky enough to have my own room (I was the only man!) and so I could easily retreat and work for a few hours. Or else I could walk alongside the nearby stream or hang about in the kitchen, talking over the morning workshop, issues raised by my tutorial or just general banter. The social aspect of the courses is crucial and it never fails to amaze me how easily, apparently invisibly, the group gels into a mutually supportive entity.

This particular course was unusually workmanlike. We were all in bed by 11pm, too shattered to do anything else. However, late night (indeed all-night) drinking sessions are a fairly commonplace event on these courses, although by no means obligatory.

In more ways than one, the course isn’t over. For starters, I have to hand in 3,000 words to Janet by November 6 for a final piece of feedback (I rather think this will be a synopsis, a piece of writing I have been avoiding for a long time.) And also because the teaching was so exacting and so exactly what I needed to develop my novel further, it has set me off on a different trajectory entirely and one that I welcome. I will continue to go on these courses for the foreseeable future and I urge anyone who values their life as a writer to watch out eagerly for next year’s program. I will be.

The Arvon Foundation

Ty Newydd

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