I would like to extend my reply to a young would be writer I chatted with on face book. You will see from my bio that I taught Creative Writing in adult education for 18 years. After retirement I am still teaching the subject to a more diverse cross section of students, but for the pleasure of doing so. Creative Writing has become my way of life for which I rarely get paid but love to do.

In the last sentence is the truth of the life for most writers so why teach the subject to young people when they are going to need a paid job?

Scientists need imagination to ask, what if? Computer studies can take on real purpose when a writer understands how everything you learn to do with a computer will help support a writing career. In fact, you can’t be a writer these days without access to the net and the ability to compute. Making a web site, taking photos and editing them, making videos as well as excel for spread sheets etc., If you want to be a writer go to every computer class you can and learn at home.

A child said to me, “I don’t need maths to write.” That was wishful thinking. Marketing needs maths to record incoming and outgoings (your outgoings will be bigger than your incomings to begin with). You need to be able to make reliable financial projections and analyse your business responses to tweets, blogs, Facebook etc.

History can give a depth to your stories and you can learn history by making up your own stories around historical events choosing to be historical characters. The man who thought up Horrible Histories was on to a winner.

Improving your college C.V. can come from running or contributing to the school magazine. Working to dead lines and seeing your name in print are useful skills. Getting involved in the school play is a huge writers’ learning curve and fun.

Sociology and cultural studies teaches about other people, they could be your potential readers. If you are going to be a writer you need readers. Who are they? Communication and media studies are often criticised as soft options for ‘a’ level subjects and for a degree. I would disagree. They are only poor subjects if the students believe these courses will make them rich and famous. These subjects can be stepping stones into a wider job market. i.e. A film studies student and artist became a make-up artist for carnival and minor films. She makes her money from weddings. You can learn a list of subjects by studying film and whatever you choose to do in life is will not be based on one subject.

The broad picture!  Science teaches the writer useful facts and teaches the scientist how to use fiction to imagine new outcomes.

Our brains are wired to learn from multi sources other than plain facts on a page. Add pictures and stories and the facts are easier to learn – that’s a known fact.

Learning languages, in my case teaching English as a foreign language, Creative Writing is a great confidence builder. We now know that students encouraged to use a language creatively and allowed to make mistakes and mix a native language with a new language have better learning outcomes at the end of 5 years than those who learn solely from a book. In Sri Lanka children can use three languages in one sentence. It was thought this would discourage them from learning English but the opposite has proven to be true. Interesting.

Art and music, for inspiration

and story writing. Poetry to music for the school play. Music for your videos and knowing which music to mention in a story.

I guess there is a book here but I’m busy writing fiction. In the meantime I thought I would share these random thoughts.

If you have ideas to contribute or examples, please add them to the comments box or send me a link to your blog.

Next Week

2. Creative Writing for Adults

I want to share what I have learned for free. You might like to check out my other blogs.

Please forgive the link to my book on Amazon. My Romantic Comedy only 99p and it gets 5* reviews around the world. http://tinyurl.com/jd6bn9 Has a target audience of women 35+ I know men read it too.

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