Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your career/published works or work-in-progress, including your Masters project(s)?

I spent my working life as a software engineer. When I retired, I finally had the time to return to one of  my teenage passions and explore the world of literature and creative writing. I chose to follow the novel option in the Creative Writing MA at Manchester Met, but also have been writing short stories and poetry as well. I submitted the opening of a mixed genre historical time travel novel that incorporated elements of the supernatural and which explored ideas of love, sin and redemption as my MA dissertation. I’m still working on completing that novel but have also published several short stories and poems in the meantime, most of which have been prompted by ideas encountered in the MA. One of these, Joe Cortana, received a Highly Commended in the 2021 Writing Magazine/Writers’ Weekend Short Story competition.

How do you think being part of the Manchester Writing School community has helped your writing career?

The course has substantially improved my technical writing skills. Perhaps more importantly, because of the insights the course has given me into the intellectual aspects of the writing process and the nature of other writers’ works (both student and professional), it has fundamentally changed the way I think about writing and the satisfaction I get from it.

What did you find was your most valuable experience as part of the Manchester Writing School? What were the highlights?

I found the regular weekly tutorials and peer to peer workshops to be extremely valuable and enjoyable. I think I learnt as much, if not more, from critiquing and discussing other student’s work as I did from working on my own creative writing. I found the tutors to be very supportive, encouraging and warm hearted, with a real interest in helping me produce the best possible work. The emphasis was strongly on practical analysis or synthesis of creative works, rather than a mechanistic or didactic approach. I particularly enjoyed the Crime Writing module, which included sessions with established contemporary crime writers as well as discussion of highly regarded works in the genre, plus the opportunity to workshop our own crime writing.

What advice would you give to students looking at studying at the Manchester Writing School, or just starting out on the course?

Writing is a solitary occupation but learning the writer’s craft is best done by developing and maintaining a strong curiosity about how a broad range of writers go about their work in a wide range of genres and forms. This means participating in supportive workshops that critique each other’s work. Though it may seem a little paradoxical, the more you understand other people’s creative voices, the stronger your own voice becomes.