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Athelstone posted an update 5 years, 2 months ago
I expect many here know about Jericho Writers, the successor to the Writers’ Workshop that hosted the Word Cloud forum. It seems that they are about to offer a one-year Writing a Novel course to include a pass to the Festival of Writing and either the Getting Published or Self-Publishing day. It also includes a full MS assessment, one to one feedback, monthly tutorials, help with agents and/or self-publishing etc. etc. From the application form and initial material, it looks to be limited to around 20 places and will, I guess, be very expensive bearing in mind the cost of the festival/day event/MS assessment/feedback and tutorials (although I see no sign of the price yet we can all do totting-up and my guess would be £thousands rather than £hundreds). Many have loved the Self-Editing courses and, of course, here at the Den we have taken on some former discussion groups as well as having the pleasure of the Course Leaders as members.
But what about this?
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Oh yes: https://jerichowriters.com/ultimate-novel-writing-course/?inf_contact_key=d3612a622f9713aceaff49c6aa278679
Oh yes (part 2): just to show how bad I am at reading things – it’s £4,950 / €5,700 / $6,500
Well, that just answered my own question for me. At about half that price I might puzzle over whether I could stretch to it, but £5K is way out of reach
Sounds to me like Harry’s got his head in the clouds again. Who on earth is going to commit that sort of money? Anyone who was confident enough of their abilities to make it seem worth it would be confident enough to think they didn’t need it, surely?
Incidentally, I see Retreat West, partners in this venture, is run by Amanda Saint, who was on my S-E course. Gives me pause for thought. She’s come all this way since, and here am I still struggling with the same novel, even if I have written another in between. The phrase ‘waste of space’ comes to mind.
At least 4 of the people in my self-edit group are publishing away, Richard. One of the our very own Bric. We definitely do not all move at the same pace along our paths!
You’re as good a writer Richard. Anyway, people on each SE course are naturally at different stages when they come into it. Incidentally I still think that second novel of yours is cracking and would urge you to keep subbing it as well as working on AROS
Agree with Daed and WB. We all take tge journey or mountain at what speed best serves us. And you should definitely keep going with AROS (as long as you want to!)
Who the hell is going to pay £5k for that? For £5k you could probably do one of the more prestigious creative writing MAs
Flippin heck. That is steep. With no guarantee at the end of it that you’d be published…
Amanda does seem to be getting on well – there are some other ex cloudies working with her now as well.
Interesting… almost feels like they’re trying to offer something similar to the Curtis Brown Creative course. That’s a massive amount to invest.
Ok that’s mad. For £84 you can join skillshare (having got the first 3 months free) and pretty much learn evetything being taught here from a choice of 100s of different teachers. With a bit of research and determination, you can find professional author groups to join that will give you a lot of the hand holding and help. Ok it includes the increasinglh prohibitively priced FOW and presumably the getting published day and there’s no substitute for events like that – but there are plenty of other events run in UK that are as good and much more competitively priced. MS appraisals ditto. I guess if you are a complete beginner the lure of a guiding hand every step of the way might be a powerful one. Or if you have that money and would think nothing of spending 5k on a dream/ hobby then this is conveniently packaged. But honestly that price tag is ridiculous.
Yes, Jules, that’s just what I was getting at above. If you’re so near to the start of your writing journey as to need everything in this package it’s still basically a dream/hobby. And how many have that sort of money to blow on a dream?
Chichester Uni’s creative writing MA costs £5,202, and features some fairly big names on the teaching roster. With all due respect to the people on the Jericho course, they ain’t Jim Crace or Kate Mosse.
And of course at the end of that you have a postgraduate qualification as well as having received first-class teaching and support
If I had 5k to spend, I’d spend it on an MA. YOu get the 1:1 tutoring from highly qualified teachers and writers, peer support, much more in depth writing tuition, and you end up with a degree that agents etc will sit up and pay attention to. No contest. (I wish I had 5k. I’d LOVE to study writing at MA level)
Me too, Raine. And yeah if I had a soare 5k to spend on writing, that’s where my money would go too.
Same
Very much the same.
Tick. I’ve learned that money spent on courses, assessments, etc isn’t necessarily well-spent. I’ve already wasted too much.
Wow, Daeds, that comparison is a real eye opener. I wonder which will go best on a CV? He really has showed himself up for what he is IMHO.
It is indeed a lot of money. It is rather aimed at complete beginners as far as I can tell, because somewhere (possibly in a blog about it) Harry has said that if you have completed a novel and are editing it then it probably isn’t for you (at least not for that novel) so it does seem like a write from scratch hand-holding affair. I’m sure that it contains a lot more practical advice than, say, an MA, but although they dangle agents into the mix I would have thought that anyone wanting to get in front of agents would be much more likely to shell out that sort of dosh on a Curtis Brown course.
It does include lifetime membership of Jericho Writers, though, so I suppose if one planned to be a member for ten years plus it would start becoming economic.