Those passionate, excited or melancholy moments when we find ourselves writing - these are inspired moments. And the material itself contains the seeds of its most powerful shape. When you take in that thought, you take a giant step towards realizing your creativity to its fullest extent.
This workshop helps to re-align the critical voices in our heads to support our inspiration. No matter whether you write journals, plays, poetry or novels, when you read aloud your material in the workshop we will mirror your strengths by repeating the most energetic lines back to you. This powerful technique is part of the ‘syngenetic’ format and fosters an awareness of the immense creative powers inherent in each of us.
Over the course of the workshop we will proceed through a suite of exercises that will bring out your creativity in a variety of ways. One of these exercises ‘Crazy Child’ involves getting our writer and editorial voices to take a walk and let our creative unconscious - our ‘crazy child’ write whatever it wants.
We will also address our unique strengths and weaknesses and brainstorm how each of us can best continue our writing outside the workshop. We’ll do this as a group and in short individual consultations with the instructor.
By the end of the course the positive voices that appreciate your strengths will have entered the process, and you will have begun feeling that your writing can go on and on, growing in power all the time.
Clive Matson holds an MFA from Columbia, and has taught at such diverse venues as the bay Area Socialist School, Pacific Oaks College, the Writers Center of Marin and UC Berkeley Extension.
He was honoured as ‘Best Writing Teacher of the East Bay’ by the East Bay Express and won the PEN Oakland’s Josephine Miles National Literary Award 2003.
He is the author of eight volumes of poetry and the writing tutorial ‘LET THE CRAZY CHILD WRITE’.
"Clive Matson, a master teacher, set me on the path to writing freely, to writing with exuberance and joy. He is gentle and nourishing in his critiques and tough when pushing you to your highest potential."
--Isabelle Maynard, author of CHINA DREAMS (University of Iowa Press, 1996)
"I've seen every kind of writer come from Clive's workshops very much improved and with a newfound confidence. He cherishes the primary impulse to create in everyone. He leads his merry band of writers to a place of vibrant self-realization; his humor and enthusiasm are as infectious as his wisdom."
- Joe Quirk, best selling author of THE ULTIMATE RUSH (William Morrow, 1998)
Cost £255 (£235 if booked by the 28th June), (£225 for payments received before 30/06/06); deposit £125 (non-refundable).
