FWA: Ideally, what writing experience do the students doing your course need to have?
DR: Students aren’t required to have any formal writing eduction, instead we are looking for people whose passion for realising their own writing project is matched by a commitment to the steady, challenging, but exciting work that writing requires. Students will be required to show that they have already commenced their chosen project and have a substantial amount of work to bring to the course, even if it’s in rough form.
FWA: How do you ensure a focus on students’ works-in-progress?
DR: At every session, the tutor will set a specific exercise – to be completed in the students’ own time – that is designed to develop an aspect of the students’ writing projects. This exercise will always include an expected word count. All exercises will be shared with the class in an atmosphere of supportive, constructive criticism, and strategies for moving the project ahead will also be explored. Separate to these exercises, it will be expected that students commit to a weekly word count for their project, and this writing too will be workshopped with the class. As the course tutor, I will regularly explore with the class questions of writing resilience, how to overcome doubt, how to work through a writing block, and how to keep an eye on the big picture – the completed project – whenever obstacles arise.
FWA: What is the main thing you hope students will have achieved by the end of your course?
DR: My aims for my students are not modest: at the end of the course I hope they will have either a manuscript that’s ready to be presented to a publisher, or one that is substantially developed and the student feels, because of their learning in the course, they now have the skills and confidence to complete on their own. My other hope is that the life of every student will be greatly enriched by the course readings, the relationships enabled by working in a supportive group of like-minded peers, and, above all, the deep encounter with themselves that is at the heart of all writing.
Writing the Narrative Nonfiction Book: Completing Your Manuscript
with Deborah Robertson
MELBOURNE
18 February – 24 May 2023
Apply for a 2023 Faber Writing Scholarship for Nonfiction Writers here.