The words@work Programme
Are you a writer living and working in Scotland?
The Scottish Book Trust's words@work scheme offers writers the opportunity to enhance and develop your skills.
Writers agree that words@work offers a range of excellent opportunities:
"I felt I learned an enormous amount on the course and not just about writing for radio. There are many things that I will apply to my prose work." - Zoë Strachan, author of Negative Space
"Extremely helpful, practical and inspiring - Also good fun." - Anne Donovan, author of Buddha Da
words@work aims to equip writers with the skills they need to find an audience for their work, make a living from their words and help them find new ways to achieve their goals.
words@work, now in its fourth year, offers a great range of development opportunities and mentoring placements for writers throughout Scotland. words@work courses are great value and are a hugely beneficial resource to writer development in Scotland.
As the words@work project has developed we have been able to offer the following:
- Performance training to writers in the early stages of their careers, or who want to perfect their performance techniques.
- Interview training to help calm the nerves.
- We have given writers the opportunity to move into writing for screen, stage and radio, working with the very best practitioners in these fields.
- This year we have introduced legal surgeries, offering FREE advice to writers on any aspect of their work - contracts, confidentiality, intellectual copyright, setting up as a small business, insurance, tax and more.
- We have worked with the Cultural Enterprise Office to provide a cross arts view of time management, project management and working alone.
- We've looked in depth at writing in healthcare and in schools.
Mentoring
The mentoring project has been one of the key successes of words@work. Writers can apply to the project at any stage in their career. They must have a specific project that they want to work on for an intensive period of nine months. This can involve changing platform or genre, working on one particular aspect of their writing craft, completing a collection of poetry or short stories, or working on a first novel. This offers individuals the chance to have face-to-face contact, time and feedback with experts up to a nine-month period.
Mentors have included Bernard MacLaverty, Alan Bissett, Kathryn Ross, Alana Knight, Adrian Mead, Douglas Gifford, Tom Leonard and many more.
The words@work mentoring project accepts applications once a year and will be inviting applications for the next round in May 2007. For more information about words@work, contact Caitrin Armstrong, Administrator, on 0131 524 0166 or email caitrin.armstrong@scottishbooktrust.com
Individual writers' successes...
- Written for the stage for the first time and received a commission from the Traverse.
- Completed a first novel and found publication.
- Won a major writing award.
- Recovered from a dry writing period.
- Found an agent.
- Discovered a talent they didn't know existed.
- Completed a first novel.
- Prepared a collection of short stories.
