Creative Writing Courses

So I’m doing a Creative Writing (and English) degree and my course has got me thinking about how its taught at other universities and things. And I figured, with this being a Creative Writing website a few people might be looking to study it as well

I’ve been doing it for a month now and my uni basically make us study what I think they referred to as the four major writing mediums. I have a Poetry and Prose class and a Stage and Screen class and because I love writing so much I took Writing For The Media as my option so I do three writing courses and one lonely little Literature subject I’m loving it so far, and I’m really glad I took and I’m already thinking next year I may switch to just Creative Writing so I can do five writing courses and no Lit

But yeah, I can’t actually get enough of it. Since starting it I’ve really been in my element and I think it could be the best thing I’ve ever taken because I can't stop writing. I’m not quite sure what I want out of it yet though I think surprisingly the stage stuff is what I’m enjoying most, which is odd because I only ever wrote prose before so I’m already thinking in my last year when I specialise I’ll go for either Stage or Screen writing

So does anyone else study Creative Writing? Or is anyone thinking of doing it?

I'm doing a Creative Writing degree and I absolutely love it
My course is pretty much set out the same way - we have a Prose class, Poetry and Script (theatre, screen, radio etc). Oh, and a theory class. Theory is compulsory, at the moment we're studying Realism to Modernism. So basically we just study texts from that time period.
You can do all three (poetry, prose and script) but I only know one person who has chosen to do that. I do poetry and prose.
I really enjoy it, definitely one of the best decisions I ever made even though lots of people tried to convince me to do something else. I heard the whole "What are you going to do with a Creative Writing degree?" speech soooo many times

Oh, possibly one of the best things about it is that I don't have to do exams ....I just have to do a whole heap of assessments instead, but I prefer it that way

I don't have exams either
Except my Lit one but I only took that so people would think I was taking the English bit seriously and stop hounding me with that same speech you had

I don't have many assesments though, at least, for Stage and Screen this term I have to do a ten minute play and poetry and prose I have to do 750 words of prose and 50 lines of poetry :3 I think in terms of assessment Media Writing is the one where I get most work and that's technically a journalism course :/

I don't have to do a theory class either It's intergrated in some workshops or through suggested reading. My uni just push us into publication from an early stage, I've already been told to write and submit plays to these new writing theatres, but that concept terrifies me and I'm still unsure if play writing is where I want to go

I'm taking a Creative Writing course, it's only grade 12 high school level though :) Unfortunately, our teacher was in an awful car accident, so now we have a new teacher who isn't even half as good as our previous one.

It is quite a heavy course. Every week, we're assigned poems to analyze, which ends up being about ten pages long by the time you've finished; then book club journals, which I'm far, far behind on. And at the same time we're given short stories to write, and essays returned to edit and re-submit. I don't mind too much though. It's really helping me develop my writing skills, time-consuming as it is. But that's what writing is all about.

I'm taking Creative writing as a senior in high school ;)
I told my teacher about NaNoWriMo (Nation Novel Writing Month) and so its ALL we're going to do in the month of November; every class we have in that month, we have that whole period to work on our novels... SO FREAKING PSYCHED >w<
Of course I'm sure the rest of the class that isn't serious about it is going to use it as a study period.... but I'm sooooo happy and excited.

Twiggy.:

It sounds like you have more work that I have

Then again our course has been hindered by all these people actually turning around and saying 'I've never written before'

I'm doing an English Major at my university (University of Auckland) sadly we don't have a massive creative writing area until you're at your masters stage. There are a few courses in second and third level but they are only introductory.
Last semester (only finished exams about two weeks ago) I took the introduction to creative writing, which was brilliant and full on. In 12 weeks we covered poetry, media, short stories and drama/screenplay. All of our lecturers and tutors were all award winning writers in one of the areas too, it was amazing but all too short.

^My university is the opposite
We have loads of Writing courses at Undergrad level, but very few postgrad ones

Or at least, very few good postgrad ones

I'm hoping to do a Creative Writing course next year, if I get it (in Ireland you have to get a certain number of points in your exams to qualify for a college course).

It's arts with creative writing which means I get to study two arts (like English, History, a language, Philosophy, etc.) along with Creative Writing. I hate telling people about it though, I can just see their eyes going "What use will that be?" and people often go all quiet and awkward. Although some people do show an interest in it. My English teacher was asking me about it the last day, he'd never heard of it because it's a new course so I gave him the college prospectus so he could have a look-see.

I got my first grade back the other day ::weird
A 1st

And its the highest marked short story so far this year, not a big achievement seeing as its been two months but at least I was the one who got to set the standard

i'm seriously considering it, seeing as English is my best subject, and it's something I'd enjoy. I just don't know what I want to do afterwards. Is anybody thinking about becoming a journalist or a teacher? Or are there other careers you can do after uni?

Oh, and anybody here that's in the UK; can you recommend a good university for me to go to? There's so many available it's making my head hurt >_<

I took creative writing my freshman year, and this year I'm taking playwriting.

Such fun classes...

I'm doing a Bachelor of Arts (Professional and Creative Writing). And the parentheses are part of the course name So I basically do Arts subjects (Literature, history, filmd studies etc) and then the people who are in my course (as opposed to just an Arts course) get to pick from the writing subjects. And I'm really loving it

I've done just some general fiction classes, an editing one, a desktop publishing one and then next year I'm doing 'creative project A and B', which I think is where we get to focus on larger projects, and a script writing class, one about freelancing in the arts, and then one where we get to be an intern at a publishing house.

I think the best part about it is we get to write stories for assessment,barely an essays and no exams.

TheTallOne:

i'm seriously considering it, seeing as English is my best subject, and it's something I'd enjoy. I just don't know what I want to do afterwards. Is anybody thinking about becoming a journalist or a teacher? Or are there other careers you can do after uni?

Oh, and anybody here that's in the UK; can you recommend a good university for me to go to? There's so many available it's making my head hurt >_<

I only know London based universities seeing as that's where I was determined to study (and again, I only know the ones that were tailored to what I wanted to study, as in, I wanted to drop poetry asap but wanted to do journalism if possible). I'm at the University of Greenwich (brilliant course, also fairly low entry requirements which was a bonus, teachers and students are also really nice but I'm completely biased) but I also looked at Kingston, Roehampton and Essex and they all seemed just as good if not better.

But we had this huge lecture on what we can do afterwards (and how to get there) and the main focus was the writing industry is hard but the skills you pick up can be transferred into 90% of postgrad jobs.

TheTallOne:

i'm seriously considering it, seeing as English is my best subject, and it's something I'd enjoy. I just don't know what I want to do afterwards. Is anybody thinking about becoming a journalist or a teacher? Or are there other careers you can do after uni?

You can't teach English without a degree in English literature so if you want to be a teacher you should look at joint honours.

I've signed up for a creative writing half-course/workshop thing for next semester at uni. More out of curiosity than out of a genuine desire to write professionally. It just seems fun. I went to a film making workshop once and that was epic fun.

Thank you so much for your help guys.

@tony stark. Yes, Essex would be ideal as I live here, but I wanted to move away so London is next on my list. I had no idea which universities did creative writing though, so thanks for naming some for me ^-^ I wasn't sure if I wanted to do this but now I'm pretty set on it.

@Kafka Joint honours? I have no idea what that means...But I was thinking of becoming a teacher, yes, if the author/journalist thing doesn't work out. Film making certainly seems fun, even though I didn't take media studies

TheTallOne:

@Kafka Joint honours? I have no idea what that means...But I was thinking of becoming a teacher, yes, if the author/journalist thing doesn't work out. Film making certainly seems fun, even though I didn't take media studies

Joint honours means you do a kind of sandwich degree. You take two separate, yet similar/interconnected degrees and then stuff them both into a single degree. You usually do the same number of courses for both parts of your degree and you don't get as many fun optional modules as people doing single honours.

I intend to teach (English as a foreign language and/or English literature) and I'm doing a joint honours in English Lit and Comparative Lit (though I'm going to a Scottish uni so my degree isn't set in stone yet). Oh btw you don't really need an English lit degree if you want to teach English as a foreign language in case that's what you want to do, you just need to go to a English for speakers of other languages course (which, admittedly, is pretty pricey). Admissions people for film related programmes with an emphasis on film making (as opposed to film studies) are more interested in your portfolio (photographs, short films, maybe sketches and scripts) than in whether you took media studies, so if you're serious about film making you shouldn't let it put you off.

So I'd love to take a creative writing degree, but I'm not really interested in doing it professionally... (writing) What can you use the degree for?

^From what I've been told so long as the job doesn't require specifics it can be transferred into most things. Like, you couldn't try and become something like a marine biologist with it because that'd be mental. It really depends what sort of thing you're looking to do I guess. I did have notes on some examples they gave us this term but I misplaced them

edit; (from my university's website)
Some students may find employment as professional writers. The programme also equips students with many transferable skills, enhancing employability in many fields, including education, teaching, management, PR, marketing and the publishing industry. Students may also wish to continue their study and practice of writing through postgraduate programmes. Those wishing to become teachers would expect to gain a postgraduate qualification.

lovecraft:

So I'd love to take a creative writing degree, but I'm not really interested in doing it professionally... (writing) What can you use the degree for?

I think most universities offer creative writing modules with English/humanities degrees so you could just take a creative writing course rather than do a whole degree in it. I dunno, I think doing a degree in something which is pretty unemployable outside its own sphere of interest is pretty risky.