Creative Writing

Course tutor: Rolf Hughes
Guest lecturers may be invited to contribute, depending on resources and availability.

Introduction
Contact between practitioners from different disciplines can stimulate valuable perspectives on familiar assumptions. This course is open to management professionals from business and industry; its purpose is to use writing as a means of imaginatively investigating and enlarging professional life.

Writing is a professional necessity. Understanding the codes of written communication in one's field is essential for professional success. We become part of a discourse community through our writing and oral presentations. Writing workshops and the close analysis of a broad range of written texts will equip course participants with the practical skills necessary for successful performance in actual, unpredictable situations of professional communications requiring highly sophisticated linguistic and rhetorical competence. At a purely practical level, therefore, developing a repertoire of creative writing strategies will help the professional to express his/her ideas in a more effective and engaging manner. But there is a wider contribution to be made and it concerns writing as an aid to critical reflection.

Good writing can encourage us to 'look again' - to discern underlying patterns or unexpected insights within familiar routines and opportunities. Writing, therefore, can teach us to 'read' in ways which open, rather than reduce, imaginative possibilities. A set of questions we might ask of a passage of writing - for example, what is being said? to whom? from what distance? with what motivations? - may be illuminating when applied to other activities such as business meetings, research papers, reports, proposals, formal presentations etc.

The course will examine the connections between writing and reading skills and suggest how training in one can be used to improve skill in the other. Creative writing is understood as a form of model making, which uses the oldest and most enduring technology available to us - language.

Aims
to use writing and reading as aids to reflective practice
to develop critical and imaginative writing skills through close reading and discussion of examples of resonant or persuasive writing
to examine writing and reading within diverse professional practices and thereby to explore the changing relations between knowledge and its representation.

Language
English.

Pedagogical Approach
Participants should be prepared to submit short examples of their writing, make a brief statement regarding the aims and intentions of the writing, and contribute constructive criticism, where appropriate, of other participants' work. By identifying the rhetorical strengths and limitations of particular examples of writing, the aim is to build up a repertoire of imaginative representational strategies, and to develop good judgement in evaluating one's own written work as well as that of others.

Each Metamorphosis course starts with an interview to identify the particular needs of individual participants and ends with a course evaluation form to assess how far your key objectives have been recognised and achieved through your participation on the course.

Structure
The course is taught over 10 weeks in the form of a weekly seminar/workshop. The emphasis is on the participants' own work and short written exercises will be assigned regularly. Assignments will be copied and distributed for group discussion. The author's name will not initially appear on written assignments. The course also provides opportunities for students to refine work over successive weeks with an aim to publication. The tutor will give professional guidance and advice to those who seek to publish their work, although this is not an explicit aim of the course.

The course is taught by Rolf Hughes, an English writer with more than ten years' experience teaching creative writing at the University of East Anglia (UK), the University of Iowa (USA), and Stockholm University (Sweden).

Miscellaneous
A shorter version of the course (5 weeks) is also available. The course is modular and interested parties can therefore combine individual modules with units from other Metamorphosis courses, by agreement. It is also possible to order single lectures and one-day presentations/seminars concerning one or more topic covered by the course.

Please contact Metamorphosis to discuss your company's specific requirements.

Further details: info@metamorphosis.se
Or phone Rolf Hughes on 070-757 0100.