As the tutor of both Kickstart Your Novel and the Writing a Novel Online programs, I’m in the privileged position of being able to see how the courses can work together.
If you’d like to take on the Writing a Novel course, but feel a little daunted by the year-long commitment or the insurmountable task at hand, I’d highly recommend trying the Kickstart course first. I teach both courses using the Wet Ink platform, so you’d get a chance to see if the program’s functionality will work for you before you commit to a year of working that way. A lot of what we cover in Kickstart is a compressed version of what we cover in the longer course, because while our focus in Kickstart is on the opening chapter, it’s impossible to discuss the opening chapter without looking at the novel as a whole.
About half the students in my Writing a Novel class this year were Kickstart alumni, and I suppose my previous relationship with them gave me a bias when selecting students for the longer course. To my mind, the ability to write an excellent novel is only marginally about possessing raw talent. I believe that talent is simply ‘a way of seeing or being’ that some have stumbled on by themselves, but others need to be shown, and once they are, then WOW! Suddenly this latent ’talent’ is alive on the page. I think dogged determination, the ability to recognise good writing and understand how it works, the ability to listen to feedback (and know what is right for your project and what isn’t), a vision or strong sense of what you want for your novel are equally as important. I knew who the Kickstart alumni were, how committed they were, and a little about their visions for their novels, so I could see beyond what might have been unpolished writing in their submission. I could already see how we might work together.
Because working on a novel puts all of us in a vulnerable position, I think it’s important to work with a teacher, and in an environment, that enables you to be vulnerable in a comfortable way. By trying out the Kickstart course, you can put me and my approach to writing pedagogy on probation!
Kickstart Your Novel
ONLINE
24 January – 13 March 2024