The Writer’s Workbench with Aiden O’Reilly

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.