The Writer’s Workbench with Aiden O’Reilly
Info
Date: July 8, 2025
Time: 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm
Duration: 8 weeks
Level: Beginner |
Cost: Cost: €275 (€247 Members)
Location: Irish Writers Centre
This course will take place in person on Tuesdays (eight sessions in total).
Course Summary
The focus is on writing as a craft with a toolbox of techniques at your disposal. We will try a few and participants can see what works best for their purposes. Two pillars of the course are: Reading as a Writer, and Editing.
Course Outline
Week 1: Introductions, glimmers
Week 2: Reading as a Writer – learning from the best
Week 3: Phenomenological approach
Week 4: Dialogue tips, punctuation
Week 5: Minimalism and pared-down styles
Week 6: Plotting and pitching
Week 7: Editing techniques, typical typos, feedback
Week 8: Discussing edits
Participants will do short exercises in class and they can email them to the teacher for personal feedback. Required reading will be sent out weekly by email.
Course Outcomes
Participants will dip into the writers’ toolbox and stretch their writing muscles in new directions. Non-fiction writers have benefitted from the course.
Aiden O’Reilly’s debut short story collection Greetings Hero was published in 2014. He studied mathematics, and has worked as a translator, a building-site worker, an IT teacher, and a property magazine editor. He won the biannual McLaverty award, and his fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Dublin Review, The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, Litro Magazine, The Missouri Review, the Winter Papers, the DRB, and many other places.
