Author: Maggie Hamand

My son Toby is just launching London’s first board games cafe in Haggerston this autumn, called Draughts. It’s going to be a unique venue where you can meet and play games with your friends and eat high quality food and drink. Check out their website at www.draughtslondon.com.

I’m planning a couple of creative writing workshops there later this year to celebrate the launch of my latest book on writing, Creative Writing Exercises for Dummies. We’ll be playing some writing games, inspired by this quote from Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: ‘All games have morals; and the games of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate.’ How true of plotting fiction! We’ll be using games to help you plot your story, flesh out your characters, and explore different settings and scenarios.

Let me know if you want to go on the mailing list for information on the workshops – places will be limited!

Our first summer workshop booked up so fast  that it’s full already, so we have fitted in a second workshop at The Groucho Club from 26-29 August. This is a workshop for people at all levels, with inspiring exercises, group work and an opportunity to have a one-to-one session to discuss a sample of your work.

I love teaching the summer workshop – it’s always such fun and full of unexpected insights and surprises. If you want a few days concentrating on your work in progress or finding new inspiration, then this is for you!

This term’s courses start today. We still have a few places left on our remaining course starting Monday 12th May and Saturday 17th May, so do take a look at the dates.

I’m really looking forward to the term. New beginnings are always exciting, and the spring is also a great time to start on something new. So, think of a new beginning for one of your characters. Write a scene in which they embark on something different, starting a new project or a new relationship, and leaving something old behind.

If you’ve been working on a project for some time, why not write a new story, something completely unconnected with what you’ve done before? Maybe try a new genre, or write from a different point of view. Surprise yourself! And you may well come back to your long-term project with more enthusiasm and a new impetus.

I love Easter. It’s a big festival that carries so much less stress and weight of expectation that Christmas. There are hot cross buns and Easter eggs and Simnel cake and a family roast lamb lunch to look forward to, and everything in the garden is bursting into flower. I get up before daybreak to go to the early service, walking to church in the milky light through the hushed streets with the dawn chorus filling the air. We light the paschal candle and process into the church just as, since the dawn of mankind, human beings must have carried this precious flame into their holy places, marking the passage from winter to spring, from darkness into light, from death to life.

My novel, The Resurrection of the Body, takes place over the Easter weekend and mirrors the Easter story. Why not write your own story set at Easter? And if you do, why not send me the result?

Happy writing – and happy Easter!

Rosie Rowell attended our Tuesday afternoon advanced group for many terms. During the course she worked on her first novel, Leopold Blue, which has just been published by Hot Key Books, showing that publishing success is possible for those who work long and hard enough on their writing! This is what she has to say:

It took many years to write Leopold Blue. Part of the reason is that it didn’t fully become a story until I had a complete draft, at which point the hard work began. From the beginning I saw the process more as one of ‘learning how to write’ than writing my first book. Maggie’s Tuesday afternoon course, which I attended for a very long time, was where I learnt technique and craft. It also taught me the value of developing close friendships with other writers.

There was another process that had to happen in the writing of Leopold Blue that took almost as long as the writing. I call it ‘coming out’ as a writer. It took a very long time for me to be able to call myself a writer in my head and to the world. I found Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones very helpful in that process. So much of what she writes is simply about empowering the quivering, doubt-ridden writer. While Leopold Blue is a work of fiction, it is based on a town where I lived as a child. Characters like Marta, Juffrou du Plessis and Witbooi lived there and I very much wanted to capture them.

In a chapter called ‘Original Detail’, Natalie Goldberg writes:

‘It is important to say the names of who we are, the names of the places we have lived, and to write the details of our lives. …  our moments are important. This is what it is to be a writer: to be the carrier of details that make up history.’

I come back to these words often, especially on those many days that I stare at a blank screen and want to run away. What we write is important and it is important to write.

Rosie Rowell, February 2014

Creative Writing For Dummies has done so well that I have just been commissioned to write a follow-up title, which will be called Creative Writing Exercises For Dummies. It will be packed full of practical information and writing exercises to help you develop your characters, create the concrete world of your story, grapple with plot and structure, and much. much more!

The aim is to publish before Christmas, so I have a tight deadline to meet. I’ll keep you posted with progress, and if you have any issues you’d particularly like tackled, then let me know and I can work them in.

Happy New Year! To launch the new term, we’re running a writing weekend at The Groucho Club on 18 and 19 January. This is the perfect way to launch yourself back into writing for the new year, as we’ll be giving you plenty of writing exercises and prompts as well as offering you a space to ask about any problems you have with your current writing so that we can help you to fix these.

We only have a couple of places left so do let me know as soon as you can if you’d like to book or need any more information.