Work With Me On Your Writing
And 5% discount for all Itch of Writing paying supporters and super-supporters
If you’ve found This Itch of Writing, it’s probably because you’re writing fiction, memoir or non-fiction. Perhaps your goals include getting published or self-publishing your work - or perhaps you write purely for your own satisfaction, or a readership of friends and family. The Itch is for all these kinds of writer and it’s been going for seventeen years, but you may not know that I’ve been mentoring, appraising and teaching writing for even longer.
Whether you’d like help with your own confidence and hopes as a writer, specific technical and creative challenges, the development of a possible project, getting your work into shape to offer to editors and publishers, or just wrestling that synopsis into submission, I will do my best to help. If you’d just like to think further about whether one-to-one professional help with your writing is for you, now or in the future, click here.
I’m delighted to offer the Itch’s paying supporters and super-supporters an exclusive 5% discount on all my fees.*
MENTORING is ideal if you want one-to-one help with both the close-up detail of your writing, and the larger challenges and opportunities of a book-length project and your writing’s long-term development. Many writers like to work by arranging, at the end of each meeting, the date for the next - every six weeks would be typical - but others prefer to wait and see how they get on. I am happy to work either way.
ONE-OFF TUTORING & FEEDBACK: I am equally happy to arrange a single meeting. This would usually be based on reading some of your work, to address whatever you feel your writing needs, from the technical - ‘I know I could make better use of psychic distance, but how?’ - to the practical ‘How do I get this story to work?’, or even the existential: ‘Is my writing any good?’ Alternatively, I can provide full written feedback, without a meeting, if you feel that would be more useful.
For more details about how it all works and what it costs, click through to my website, email me here on emmadarwin@substack.com, or use the contact form on my website.
I also love working with writer’s groups, courses and writing circles: for more about this, click through here.
A BIT ABOUT ME:
After a few years working in academic publishing, I completed an MPhil in Writing, which included my debut novel The Mathematics of Love. I cut my teaching teeth on manuscript appraisals for what was then Writers’ Workshop (now Jericho Writers). At the same time I was studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths (which included A Secret Alchemy) and teaching as an Associate Lecturer for the Open University.
Since then I have completed a course in coaching for writers run jointly by the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) and the Arvon Foundation, and worked with scholarly and practice-led academic writing as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Music. As a result, I’ve moved into working individually with both published and unpublished writers in all genres: not only fiction, memoir and creative non-fiction, but trade non-fiction and scholarly writing.
My teaching experience includes giving workshops and keynote speeches at writers’ festivals and conferences including the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Historical Novel Society and Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading; judging several literary prizes; examining PhDs; currently, I am teaching for Oxford University, Goldsmiths, Jericho Writers and Blue Pencil.
Whether you’re a beginner, an experienced writer, a Masters graduate, or a published author, I would be delighted to discuss how I can help you with your writing, so do get in touch.
*The 5% discount on my fees for paying supporters of This Itch of Writing is valid provided you are a paid subscriber when you book, and still a paid subscriber when we work together. This offer and my current fees are guaranteed until 5th April 2025.