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www.anneaylor.co.uk

Course Dates   What's New?   About Anne

Short Courses

Fiction Masterclass Intensive
Lucas Arms
London WC1, UK
11 & 18 Nov 2012
Look or book

So You Want to Write a Novel
Lucas Arms
London WC1, UK
10 Jan - 14 Mar 2013
Details

Weekend Courses

Release the Writer in You
Rembrandt Hotel
London, SW7, UK
24 - 25 Nov 2012
Look or book

Release the Writer in You
Rembrandt Hotel
London, SW7, UK
23 - 24 Feb 2013
Details to follow

 

Courses Abroad

Novel Intensive in Catalonia
La Torre de Dalt
Camós, Spain
8 - 15 Jun 2012
Look or book

Write Now! in Portugal
Holiday Inn Algarve
Armação de Pêra, Portugal
27 - 29 October 2012
Look or book

 

Courses 2012

In June a 7-day novel writing course and retreat will be held in an amazing baronial country house in Catalonia with fabulous food, a fiesta and a swimming pool.

A course will be held the last weekend in October in Portugal. The venue will be the Holiday Inn Algarve which overlooks a spectacular beach.

November will mark a 2-day workshop, "Fiction Masterclass Intensive". This hands-on course will help students to craft their work and begin to see it with new eyes.

A second 2012 workshop in collaboration with Alternatives, St James' Church, Piccadilly, is planned for the last weekend in November.

 

Special Gift Idea

Wondering what special gift you might give to someone who writes or wants to? Why not give a place on one of our upcoming writing courses? There are a wide variety of workshops for all levels of ability, from beginners to published authors.

Go to the Gift Certificates page to see what you need to do to delight that special writer in your life.

 

JT.Photo

These pictures were taken during the launch party of The Double Happiness Company at the Free Word Centre in London on 27 January 2011.

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Photos: Steve Mullins

 

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In June 2012 Anne will be leading a 7-day writing retreat in Spain in the countryside outside Girona. This "So You Want to Write a Novel Intensive" has morning workshops, afternoon 1-2-1 tutorials and evening sessions to showcase your work and receive constructive criticism on your writing . . . Read more

 

. . .

NAH.FrontCover

Anne's novel, No Angel Hotel, has recently been republished. A 3-minute video trailer and an audio excerpt read by Joyce Greenaway can been found here. You can order it from Amazon. It is also available for   your Kindle: UK or US.

As of 2010, novelists (or short story writers working towards a collection) have the opportunity to submit a chapter (or story) at Anne's discretion for a one-page critique by the Christine Green literary agency. To be eligible, students must be enrolled in a CWC workshop and have manuscripts at an advanced stage of development.

 

Today's Quote

“I don’t use a typewriter. I write longhand, with a pencil. Essentially, I’m a horizontal writer. I think better lying down.”

Truman Capote

 

Student News

Chekhov

Anthea Norman-Taylor is hosting a mini-festival of Russian literature and film weekends in Oxfordshire in May and June 2012. Speakers include the distinguished translator of Chekhov, Rosamund Bartlett, and Boris Pasternak's nephew and translator, Nicholas Pasternak Slater.

More good news from Lezanne Clannachan who, in March 2012, heard that she won First Prize in The New Writer Prose Prize of 2011 with her short story, "Burial". Félicitations, girl!

Aimee Hansen has just had a feature travel article "How much can you steal in 30 seconds?" published on Matador. A great read.

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Clare Jacob's debut novel, Ophelia in Pieces, was published in March. Congratulations, Clare!

 

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Anne Aylor is a professional writer and teacher who has had short stories and poems published by the Arts Council of Great Britain, The Literary Review, London Magazine and Stand Magazine.

Her first novel, No Angel Hotel, was republished in February 2012. Her second novel, The Double Happiness Company, was published in January 2011. She is 90,000 words into her third and is working on a fourth.

In addition to being a runner-up in a Radio 3 competition, a number of her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio. In 2008 she was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. She was shortlisted for the 2011 Fish Short Story Prize.

Her stage play, Children of the Dust, won a playwrighting competition and was co-produced by the Soho Theatre and Theatre Warehouse, Croydon.

She worked in post-war Bosnia where she practised Chinese medicine and taught ballet. She teaches ballet at Morley College in London and is a member of PEN. In 2007 she was a shortlist judge for the story competition held by the Wimbledon Book Fest and in 2011 she was the judge in the Peter Barry Short Story Competition.

If you'd like to see a sample of her work, you can read a 500-word short story, or listen to her poem, Weather Report.

 

Anne's Blog

FlashbackQueen

In novels and motion pictures a flashback is a narrative technique to interrupt the chronology of the story to cut away to something that has happened in the past.

The flashback technique is as old as Western literature. In The Odyssey, most of the adventures that blighted Odysseus' return journey from Troy are told in flashback . . . Read more

Writing Tips

1. Use the time of a total

    stranger in such a way that

    he or she will not feel the time

    was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one

    character he or she can root

    for.
3. Every character should want

    something, even if it is only a

    glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one

    of two things—reveal

    character or advance the

    action.
5. Start as close to the end as

    possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how

    sweet and innocent your

    leading characters, make

    awful things happen to them

    in order that the reader may

    see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one

    person. If you open a window

    and make love to the world,

    so to speak, your story will

    get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much

    information as possible as

    soon as possible. To hell with

    suspense. Readers should

    have such complete under-

    standing of what is going on,

    where and why, that they

    could finish the story them-

    selves, should cockroaches

    eat the last few pages.

Kurt Vonnegut

 

 
© 2005 Anne Aylor  
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." A Chekhov