Creative Writing Courses

An author I know who also teaches creative writing (CW) is currently engaged in a bit of reflective practice on the whole business of teaching and is asking friends, acquaintances and anybody connected with CW if they’d to help.

If you are on a CW course, if you have ever taken one or if you CW courses and you have a few moments, it would be great if you could have a look at the questions below. Any answers would – I know – be very much appreciated.
Just pop them in the comments box and it will be scanned daily… I’ve kicked off with my own responses.

1. Have you ever participated in writing workshops? If so, did you find them useful? How and why or why not?

2. If you teach, do you use the workshop format? Why or why not?

3. In your experience, is the workshop a good use of time on a course?

4. To your knowledge, are there creative writing programmes that do not utilise the workshop?

5. In your opinion, are workshops a necessary part of any undergraduate or postgraduate programme?

[PS - In response to Tim's question in the comments section about what 'workshop' means, I elicited the following answer:

Yes, 'workshop' is a weird word in that people use it differently. But a practical bias is right, specifically toward 'peer critique', e.g. members of a class looking at each other's work, guided by the leader... Hope that helps!]