Vittoria D' Alessio - creative writing workshops Singapore

'If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.'

By Joyce Carol Oates

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The Survival Diaries

—aimed at 9-12 year olds.

Between workshop sets, I've started to shift my focus from journalism to website-based work (this mainly involves me helping individuals and companies produce zingy copy for their webpages) and manuscript appraisals. Critiquing other writers' works-in-progress has got to be one of the best aspects of my job. It's a deeply absorbing and time-consuming business, requiring both an eye for detail and a degree of detachment from the nuts and bolts of sentence and paragraph structure—and I love it! It's a daily reminder of how fortunate I am to have a job that allows me to become immersed in a world that endlessly captivates and intrigues me. It also brings home to me how much talent there is out there—much of it tragically unrecognised.

There's no question—some writers who ask me to cast an eye over their copy need help with technique. And yes, a fair number cannot hope to find a publisher for their work until they learn the tools that will enable them to redraft and edit their own copy more effectively. But there are other writers moving quietly in our communities who are all there long before their writing is seen by an individual outside their immediate circle. These unpublished writers have an instinctive feel for character and plot, voice and dialogue. Their writing sings quite naturally. They require precious little from an outside editor because the only thing they truly lack is confidence. What they need from me is little more than a nudge to send their novels out into the world.

At least two manuscripts from writers of this calibre have sailed through my attic window over the past six months. Having read the copy and returned it to its owners with my report, I can say with great confidence that we'll be hearing a lot more from these authors over the next few years. Watch this space!

Workshops in Singapore

Sadly, I've been forced to wrap up teaching operations in Singapore—my family is on the move once more. It has been a great pleasure and privilege working with so many enthusiastic writers these past few years and it's with a heavy that I must say goodbye to the many friends, colleagues and students who have passed through my workshops. Thank goodness for mass communication and cheap air travel!

School workshops

My final school session in Singapore took me to Tanglin Trust School, where I held a talk for secondary school students on journalism as a career path, followed by a creative writing workshop for 12 keen and talented young writers. More TTS workshops are in the pipeline.

Adult workshops

My workshop format changed during my last year in Singapore. I no longer ran the five-week Storymaking and Storymaking2 courses that participants had become familiar with. Instead, I offered a trio of full-day workshops: Creative Writing (an introduction), Writing for Children and Feature Writing. Each workshop ran from 9.30am–4pm, with lunch included. I felt these 'full immersion' workshops were the best formula for introducing emerging writers to the fundamentals of writing, as they gave participants plenty of time to discuss their own work and for groups to dwell on the finer points of writing and editing. There was a fantastically energising buzz about these workshops as ideas, questions and feedback zipped back and forth. What never failed to impress me was the willingness participants showed to be experimental in their writing and then to share the results with the group—that really does take some courage.

The feedback for the new workshop format was overwhelmingly positive, so I'll be sticking to this full-day approach when I eventually resume teaching.