Creative Writing Boost
Arts Council England (ACE) is putting £1.2m into creative writing projects in schools. There will be three awards and two of them will go to projects in the North or South West. Workshops will be led by professional writers and the children targeted will be between eight and fourteen years old. ACE’s aim is to inspire children who have a socio-economic barrier to the arts.
Schools have to apply before July 8th! So not long to get your proposal in if you are a head teacher or head of English.
Go to the ACE website to find full details.
We think this is a great initiative but wonder why so few projects will be covered by such a large sum. Professional writers would need payment and there would be some set up costs. But surely more schools could be enrolled?
Copy-editing and Proofreading
Writing is now epidemic in the UK. Exciting though this is, many writers lack any form of discipline and this makes publication and sales difficult. Publishers demand well-edited and thoroughly proofread manuscripts. Accuracy matters if you want to be a successful writer.
Creative writing courses never want to stifle talent so they generally encourage freedom of style and go easy on the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation. Copy-editing and proofreading are not usually associated with creative writing. We understand this but, in the real world of publishing, editorial skills are vital. Poorly copy-edited and badly proofread books rarely, if ever, make it to an agent or publisher. Even if you simply want to write for pleasure you will get more satisfaction if you know that your readers can easily engage with your work.
This ACE project has an opportunity to remedy this. When children are being encouraged to think freely and creatively they should also be shown the toolkit of skills which successful writers have. Virginia Woolf and James Joyce who pioneered stream of consciousness and were innovative and highly creative writers were also masters of language; they understood the value of well-crafted punctuation and grammar, however refreshingly they used it. Learning to proofread and copy-edit really matters and the earlier children appreciate this the better. Grammar and punctuation give writers freedom. A paradox but true.