This week’s prompt is:

The heavens opened.

Write for at least 7 minutes. You’re welcome to share your piece in the comments if you’d like to.

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This week’s prompt is to write about a pair of shoes.

Write for at least 7 minutes. You’re welcome to share your piece in the comments if you’d like to.

This week’s prompt is to write a piece including these three words:

content, yard, allowance

Write for at least 7 minutes. You’re welcome to share your piece in the comments if you’d like to.

This week it’s a picture prompt. Use the above image as a starting point for a poem, short story or freewrite.

Write for at least 7 minutes. You’re welcome to share your work in the comments if you wish.

Ths week’s prompt is to start with the phrase:

It was unusually bright….

Write for at least seven minutes, and do feel welcome to share your work in the comments if you wish, or to link to the piece in your own space.

This week’s prompt is to write about a place you’d love to go to, OR your favourite place that you’d visited.

Write for at least 7 minutes, and feel free to share your piece in the comments here if you’d like to.

If you enjoy writing about travel, nature, memory or other non-fiction topics in a creative way, you might enjoy our 5-week ‘Creative Non Fiction’ course, which starts on 3rd June. More info here.

Feel free to share your work in the comments if you wish :)

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Feel free to share your writing in the comments if you wish.

If you enjoyed this prompt please check out our ‘Writing the Ocean’ class on Thursday 30th April for more writing about the sea and shore!

Looking at these, I felt moved. Both apartment blocks share the same structure and purpose, but only one has been revitalised. I don’t know whether the block on the right will be given a new lick of paint at a later date, but the difference between the two inspires me to imagine two buildings for a poem: one abandoned, and the other lived-in. One representing loneliness, and the other representing love. If I was to structure the poem in this way – beginning with loneliness and moving towards love – the buildings become symbols of celebrating connection.

It thrills me that in poetry, there is always movement from one thing to another, and it’s the same with architecture. The Chinese-American Architect I.M. Pei said: “Life is architecture and architecture is the mirror of life”. We could replace the word ‘architecture’ with ‘poetry’.

Buildings can tell us a lot about humanity. We look at new-builds and see the human desire to create; we study the weathered castle and see how history can be lost or preserved. Buildings, like poems, carry emotion.

Last year, I visited the Kingsgate Bridge in Durham, designed by the Architect Sir Ove Arup. At dusk, the concrete structure created the illusion of the river solidifying beneath. The scene was entirely grey – like fog over an English beach – and, of course, beautiful. The journey across the bridge reminded me of leaving a classroom at my rural-Somerset Primary School on a cloudy day, walking through the grey playground, and running down a little path to the hidden stream nearby.

Alongside immediate contrasts (like in the example above, of Albufeira’s Old Town), time contrasts – the contrast between past and present, for example – can support a poem’s structure. For example, I could begin writing in the present tense to describe my experience on Kingsgate Bridge, and contrast it with my memories of Primary School. I’d have to keep writing to discover the rest of the poem – why these images connect, or ‘feel’ the same to me. Perhaps it’s to do with capturing time: the river felt ‘suspended’, like my journey across the playground (I can’t remember past the point of reaching the stream – I probably had Conservation Club!). I always like to trust that the images or ideas coming to mind are asking to be written about (particularly if they come up regularly!).

Architect Peter Ahrends wrote of Sir Ove Arup: “In making this bridge, and in establishing the underlying spirit of his engineering practice, he imaginatively blurred all conventional edges between engineering and architecture, between art and science”.* This May, I’m very happy to be facilitating a course for The Writing Tree called Poetry and Architecture, and we will be blurring the edges of different art forms – and time periods – to write new poems. The course is for any level of writer (prose writers are welcome too!) who would like to write some new pieces inspired by buildings, structures, gardens, and ruins.

Exercise

Here’s a exercise you might like to try, which uses a poem to create contrast:

Read this poem – The House on the Hill by Edwin Arlington Robinson – and write a poem in response, describing what the house was like before it was abandoned. Try to create a contrast – the ‘before and after’: who lived there? What was life like? Focus on those classic 5 senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and what can be heard from the house.

If you’d like an extra challenge, you could try the villanelle form, like Edwin Arlington Robinson does in his poem. The villanelle is a traditional French form: there are five stanzas (verses) of three lines each, and a final quatrain (four-line stanza). The first and third lines of the first stanza repeat alternately at the end of the following stanzas; except the final one, where they are repeated together as the final two lines of the poem. If you’re finding it difficult, don’t worry – Elizabeth Bishop went through 17 drafts to create her villanelle ‘One Art’!

*Accessed on 20.04.26 from The Royal Academy Website:https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/record-drawing-of-kingsgate-bridge-durham-plan-north-elevation-and-detail

I’m delivering a Poetry and Architecture course for the Writing Tree, which begins on Wednesday 6^th May, and runs weekly from 6.30pm-8.30pm for 5 weeks. I can’t wait to see what we construct together during the workshops. See you there!

(There are still a few tickets left, if you haven’t booked yours yet!)

It can be a real window you have access to, or the one in the photo, or an imaginary one. It can be a house window, a hotel window, a plane, train or car window.

Write for at least 7 minutes, and feel free to share in the comments if you wish.

Feel free to share your writing in the comments.

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It was time to take out the last box….

Feel free to share your writing in the comments.

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Write for 7 minutes minimum - or more.

Feel free to share your writing for this prompt in the comments if you’d like to. Happy Writing!

Come to our 'Fun With Prompts' class on 14th April on Zoom to find out how prompts can help your writing practice.

Write for 7 minutes minimum - or more.

Feel free to share your writing for this prompt in the comments if you’d like to. Happy Writing!

“There was a red house at the top of the hill…”

You can write for as long as you like - we recommend 7 minutes as a minimum.

Feel free to share your writing for this prompt in the comments if you’d like to.

Happy Writing!

If you enjoy prompts, you might enjoy our ‘Fun With Prompt’s’ Zoom session. More info on our course page.)

Some of you may remember the days when Twitter was a friendly place, full of writers, and we regularly posted writing prompts. These were much missed when we left Twitter, and we’re now able to start them again! We’ll be sharing a prompt here on Substack and on BlueSky every week, starting today. We’ll be offering a range of prompts including phrases, writing topics, images and sentence starters, and here on Substack we’ll add the occasional writing tip as well.

However, we realise not everyone might want a weekly email from us, which brings us to our second piece of news. We’ve made a few changes, and if you receive your substack posts by email you now have a choice as to what you receive in your inbox. By default you’ll receive all our posts. But if you’d prefer only to receive our posts about writing, or our prompts, or news of our courses and events, you can choose. Just go to your subscriber account here: https://thewritingtree.substack.com/account

And tick the posts you’d like to have emailed to you.

All our posts will continue to be available here on our Substack site.

There’s no time like the present, so here’s our very first Substack writing prompt!

Your prompt is to start with the following phrase and keep writing:

I write because…..

You can write for as long as you like - we recommend 7 minutes as a minimum.

Feel free to share your writing for this prompt in the comments if you’d like to. Happy Writing!

‘Take Small Steps When the Hill’s Steep’ was tip #3 at our ’10 Top Tips to Boost Your Writing’ course at the end of January, and it was very popular with our students. I think it’s a really important one, because most of the writers I know encounter times when writing feels impossible. Some give up; others throw themselves constantly at the barriers with everything they’ve got, only to find they still don’t feel they’re getting anywhere and are even more exhausted. It’s like a flight/fight response. (In many cases it actually is a flight/fight response.)

Writers face many barriers. It might be the constant dialogue with our inner critic; feelings of inadequacy; frustration that our skills don’t yet meet our vision; comparison with other writers… the list goes on. It might be barriers from the rest of our lives: demanding schedules, low energy, poor health, busy family life, work demands.

The fact is, writing takes a lot: time; creative and physical energy; and the ability to take risks. Sometimes these things are in very short supply, and we end up in a state of overwhelm.

The one piece of advice I give myself, my clients and students in this position is: don’t give up. They (and I) usually respond with narrow-eyed glare and the single question: ‘How?’

My answer? One word at a time.

When I was a child, my family had a tendency to embark on Challenging Walks. My dad was a scout master and we all shared a love of adventure, so our summer holidays in Wales often involved long treks along the beach or up mountains. Beautiful and fun, and as a ten year old I wanted to take everything as a gallop and would tire easily. My Dad had two phrases for these times: ‘Keep plodding,’ and ’Steep hills: Small steps.’ Looking back I see how many times we stopped to admire the view on those hills; how the miraculous snacks and flasks of tea would materialise from Mum’s bag just when I was most tired. And, eventually, I discovered that if you take things slow and steady you can often go further.

So what does that mean for writing?

At its heart, it means be kind to yourself, don’t give up on your goals, and work with what you have.

In practical terms, it means keep writing, but write small things. It might be a five minute edit on a first draft. A fifty word flash fiction. A haiku. A three minute observation exericise, a ten minute freewrite, a single line or sentence.

It can feel as if writing so few words is irrelevant, or so insubstantial as to be useless. But nothing could be further from the truth. Every step gets you to the hot shower at the end of your walk, and every word gets you further towards your writing goals. We learn more about writing every time we write. Perhaps these single sentences won’t make it into your novel or screenplay or poetry pamphlet (though they might!). But they mean when you get to the top of the hill and you do have the mojo to write it you’re ready. You know you’re a writer, because you’ve written however hard things were. You have a notebook full of little pieces of inspiration. You’re writer-fit because you never stopped.

If you stop, you’ll need twice as much energy to get going again.

Sometimes I think those little steps are the most precious of all: chinks of creative light in a challenging world. Perhaps not as exhilerating as three days of easy flow state, but you can’t ride the river unless you climb the mountain, right?

Never underestimate the power of a small piece of writing. There’s a phenomenon in the art world of creating ‘tiny paintings’ - trading-card sized works which are then swapped among artist friends, or sold as affordable art to collectors. They’re fun for the artists to do even when they don’t have the time or mojo to create full sized paintings. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing for us writers to do too? If you’d like to share any mini-works in the comments we’d love to see them!

Why not give it a try now? Grab a bit of scrap paper or the notes app on your phone.

Write a sentence, or a line.

Write another.

And another.

Keep going for five minutes.

How many words did you write?

Congratulations. You made another little step up the hill.

We’ve been busy putting together our Spring and Summer course programme, which is now open! You can find out course details and book here.

Details of our other services, including 1:1 mentoring and editing, are on our Website.

Happy (small!) writing!

Over this five week course ‘Wrtiing Short Stories that Shine’ we'll explore the art of writing short stories that have that something special that makes them a delight for readers. We'll examine aspects of strucutre, plot, character, language and how to develop your voice as a short story writer.

Dates: Starts Tuesday 20th Jan 2026 for five weeks on Zoom, 7pm-9pm GMT.

Price: £50

10 Tips to Boost Your Writing is a one-off, two-hour class which will give you a series of of tips and exercises to help you to give your writing a boost - everything from your writing practice to polishing to learning from each piece you write.

Date: Thursday 29th Jan 2026 7-9:00 PM GMT. Price: £10

The Writing Tree Treehouse is an online session we hold on Zoom on the first and third Thursday of each month, from 7pm - 8:30pm and the second and fourth Monday mornings each month, 9:15am-10:30am, where we gather simply to write together. You can work on your own project, but we’ll provide a prompt each session in case you don’t have anything on the go. After an hour of writing you’ll have the opportunity to chat with other members of the group if you wish.

There is no tuition for these sessions: it’s simply a place to turn up and write. Ideal for those wishing to make a commitment to their writing, but find it hard to keep to on their own - and to be inspired by the company of other writers.

You are welcome to come for a single session here and there when you feel the need, or to come along as part of your regular writing routine - everyone is welcome.

Pricing for the Treehouse sessions are ‘pay as you like’, so just chose what you want, from £3 upwards. The Writing Tree’s goal is to be affordable to as many writers as possible, while enabling those who are able to pay more to do so if they wish.

You can find out more about all our classes and events, and enrol at our TicketTailor box office.

I hope you find something there you fancy!

We’ll be back soon with a post about journalling: what it is, how to do it and why it can really benefit your writing and wellbeing. Happy New Year!

As I write this it’s four pm and dark. The air outside is chilly and damp. This is not the crisp, bright sort of winter day of brisk walks, pink noses and beautiful ice patterns. This is the gloomy, grey kind of winter that makes you want to hide under a blanket until Spring.

It’s the kind of day for a good book and a mug of hot chocolate. Which I hope is what those of you also in the northern hemisphere can do. (Those of you in the southern hemisphere might find a tree in the shade to read under.)

Many writers are also prolific readers, highly familar with the urge to retreat from the world’s problems between the pages of a good book. Some of us prefer our words turned into TV shows or movies, and for the purposes of this post, please know that by ‘reading’ I include any form of art that starts as words on a page. It’s all the same. I meet many writers who worry they don’t read much, when in fact they consume lots of words, it’s just that maybe the raw words on a page isn’t what captures them. It all counts.

The difference between writers and other readers is that writers might read for two purposes. The first purpose is for pleasure; for escape and entertainment; for education and to have our thoughts provoked on the subject matter. The second is to learn more about writing, to improve our own.

Sometimes writers tell me that writing (and especially editing) has ruined reading for them. Whatever they read they’re critically engaged with the craft and can’t relax into the piece. Others tell me they struggle to learn much from reading, because they lose themselves in the story. I have a few tips here which can help you with either situation.

The first thing is to recommend that you are conscious about which pieces you read to study the craft. Treat reading as a writer in a different way to reading as a reader. Of course, just as an ordinary reader you’re bound to pick up things unconsciously that can improve your writing. Let that process stay as a subconscious one, and contrast it with conscious study.

So, how do we go about doing this?

• Be purposeful. Choose specific texts and authors to study, depending on what you’re wanting to develop in your writing at that time.

• Rather than performing a literary analysis or review of the piece, focus on how the writer acheived any effects you’re interested.

• Interact with the text - read actively, writing notes. Come to it with a spirit of curiosity. Ask questions.

Depending on whether you’re reading to generally expand your understanding of how writing works or looking to improve a particular element of craft (character, rhythm, descriptive language etc.) you will ask different questions. But these are a good start in most cases:

1. What do you think the writer is trying to acheive in this text?

2. What stood out to you?

3. In what ways is this text similar and differnt to your own writing?

Then you can go in with more detail by doing a close reading. Close reading looks beyond the magic of storytelling and into the detail of the text which creates that story, at the level of language, form, rhythm, syntax and word choices.

To do a close reading of a text, try the following steps:

1. Read the whole piece to get an idea of what it’s about and identify what’s happening, for context.

2. Read it again slowly, pencil in hand, and this time look at the ‘how’ – how has the reader created the effects you notice in the piece?

3. Read line by line, sentence by sentence, examining the effect of the diction (word choices), the way the sentence is constructed, the sounds of the words, the punctuation, literary devices and the appearance of the text on the page.

The most important part of studying other authors’ works is to use your observations to develop your own skills and practice. When you’re finished studying a text, choose something you discovered that interests you, and experiment with it for yourself. Try out some of the techniques in a short piece. Use a line of the text as a prompt for a piece of your own.

Keep a summary of your observations in a notebook along with these experiments, so you can refer back to help with your own writing.

Whatever your approach, I hope you have some time in the coming weeks for a good read, as well as some great writing!

Writing Tree News

Two Writing Tree clients have new books out! Our friends at Converge have completed the latest volume in their anthology series, Creative Writing Heals 8, and Pat Taylor-Smith has published her debut novel: a seasonal romance called ‘A Place Like Home’. Congratulations to our wonderful authors!

Following the success of our Treehouse Sessions we are planning more. (These are sessions where we write together on Zoom. You can work on your own project, but we’ll provide a prompt each session in case you don’t have anything on the go. Ideal for those wishing to make a commitment to their writing, but find it hard to keep to on their own - and to be inspired by the company of other writers.)

We would love your opinions about the times and days you’d prefer for Treehouse sessions: tell us in the comments or drop us an email (writingtreeuk@gmail.com).

We’d also love to hear what courses you’d like us to offer - you can do that here or in the comments.

And as usual we’ll be offering our usual editing and mentoring services - check out our website for full info.

See you next year!

Firstly, we will be offering an eight-week course which starts next month via Zoom. ‘Observation for Writers’ explores the importance of and skills for observation for creative writers. It will take place on Tuesdays, 7pm-9pm, starting on 7th October. The courses will follow the usual Writing Tree format, aimed to inspire your writing through exploration of topics and lots of writing exercises.

The course is suitable for beginners and more experienced writers. Writing Tree classes on Zoom are small and friendly. You are welcome to join with or without video or audio as you like. Sometimes there will be discussions, or an opportunity to read your work, but these are optional. You can take part by chat if you prefer, or not at all, as you see fit. The sessions aim to help you relax and dedicate some time to your own writing.

This course will be lead by Writing Tree tutor Helen Kenwright. It costs just £95 for the full eight week course, and concessions are available: if you are on a low income, please enter the code CONCESSION2025 at checkout for a £20 discount.

To book your place, please visit our Ticket Tailor Site

Our second new service is the Writing Tree Treehouse. Writers often tell us they struggle to prioritise writing in their busy lives, and would welcome the encouragement and company of other writers to help. The Treehouse sessions offer an opportunity for writers to gather on Zoom and do just that. We’ll start with a chat about our projects, then write quietly for an hour. A prompt will be provided, or you can work your existing projects if you prefer. At the end of the hour we’ll have a chat about how it went.

We’ll offer sessions 7pm-8:30pm on the first and third Thursdays of each month.

These sessions cost just £3, and can be booked individually from our Ticket Tailor Site up to an hour before the session.

We hope to see you at one or both of those soon!

We still offer our usual coaching, mentoring, editing and formatting services -please see our website for more info.

We’ll be back very soon with a post about close reading - what it is and how it can help writers to improve their craft. See you then!

There are lots of Creative Writing classes out there, including our very own. I’m writing this on the eve of the summer holidays for us here at the Writing Tree, and we have just wrapped up our very first Summer School of Zoom classes. We were delighted to welcome over thirty students over the six classes, with many coming to more than one session. We look forward to providing more classes in the Autumn.

The Writing Tree is a tiny leaf in the forest of Creative Writing education. Many Universities now provide Creative Writing degrees at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Organisations like Arvon, Faber, the London Lit Lab and the Society of Authors offer their own classes, in person and online. And then there’s many successful authors who’ve set up their own classes, a lot of whom have their home here on Substack.

So why are creative writing classes so popular? Are they really helping writers to improve, or are they scams run by desperate, underpaid authors?

(Full disclosure, this article is written by an underpaid author who teaches Creative Writing, who does not believer herself to be a scammer.)

There’s been a lot of debate on the subject over the years, especially with the explosion of new degrees in the 2000s and 2010s. This Guardian article from 2011 sums up the opinions of popular writers of the day. Will Self wrote in his contribution:

I'm still not convinced Creative Writing can be taught. Perhaps you can take a mediocre novelist and make them into a slightly better one, but a course can't make someone into a good writer. Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguru both did the UEA MA, but they were both innately good anyway. Some people swear by creative writing courses. I say, go and get a job, a fairly menial one instead. Otherwise what are you going to write about? Writing is about expressing something new and exploring the form in new ways. So unless you want to churn out thrillers or misery memoirs, you can't work from a pattern book. You need to autodidact.

I have many disputes with this assertion. For one thing, I worked for a summer as a stripper in a cardboard factory, which was not as exciting as it sounds. I can assure Mr Self that it gave me very little to write about, unless I were to compose a treatise on paper cuts. But more importantly it assumes that everyone has the aptitude, focus and confidence to wholly teach themselves. I would also suggest that while teaching yourself is entirely possible, it’s not healthy. It’s far better to learn through a combination of self practice, reading and reflection on the one hand, and discussion and sharing ideas and practice with other writers on the other. Humans are squishy and frail on our own. We gain strength from community - even us lone, introvert writers.

Teachers and Teaching Approaches

Others have suggested that yes, you can learn Creative Writing, but only from established, published, well-respected authors.

I’ve been to quite a few classes by authors who fit this description. Some of them were great, but many are not, for the simple reason that knowing a lot about something, or having excellent skills, or being a really nice person who wants to help, does not necessarily mean you’re a good teacher. And if you’re not a good teacher, nobody will learn from you, whatever knowledge you may hold. It’s harder than it looks. As a teacher-trainer myself, I would love to see more courses for freelance arts teachers. Sadly, at the moment such courses can be expensive, and not necessarily suited to what we do.

The other problem I see is that there’s a lot of assumptions that Creative Writing students all want to follow the same path - the professional one, to publication, sales and renown. Of course many writers do want to pursue that route, which is great. I’ve pottered down its lesser-known side roads myself. But it’s not what every writer wants, or what every writer wants as their primary endpoint. Some writers want to self publish. Some write for a sense of creation and completion, for themselves or to share with a small audience. Some simply want to write because it’s fun.

Lots of people learn the piano with no ambition to be a concert pianist. Many of us love singing in choirs for fun and companionship. We might paint so we can create greetings cards or pictures for our home. Some of us go to dance classes to learn new steps, get fit and have a laugh with our mates.

Writing is an art like all of these. And how we choose to pursue writing has no bearing on how much talent we may or may not have. I’ve encountered many writers who would fulfil Mr Self’s definitions of ‘natural talent’ easily. But do they want to engage in the publishing industry? No. Some of them already have demanding professions in medicine, law or teaching, for example, from which Creative Writing is an escape or a balance. Some simply prefer to keep their art to themselves, and perhaps their communities of trust. Some write simply for the joy of it, which is surely the best reason of all?

All writers, regardless of what they are aiming for with their art, deserve support and education to help them perfect their craft, improve their confidence and their pleasure in their writing.

But you can’t teach ideas, the naysayers argue. You can’t teach inspiration. You can’t teach originality. This is true. But you can teach people how to harness and nurture those things; to take the raw stuff of experience, creativity, observation and energy and make it into a piece of writing. You can give people tools to help them build a writing practice that works for them. You can share tips and discoveries of writers who’ve come before us.

You can give writers the support, encouragement and resources to help them use their talent, inspiration and originality in whatever way they wish. And that is teaching.

The Creative Writing classroom comes in many guises. It might take the form of lectures, workshops, seminars, masterclasses, academic degrees or a learning for pleasure class. It might be in a pub or a college or online. It might involve a teacher with a class, or a mentor with a mentee. Writing, for me, feels like a lifelong apprenticeship. I love taking classes, talking to different writers, discussing the craft. I would encourage any other writer to do the same. I learned how to build suspense from my friends in fanfiction communities. I learned how to develop voice through my MA at York St John University. I learned that using the word ‘orb’ to describe an eye was a bad idea from a friend who kindly took me to one side and gave me A Look.

I’ve been both fortunate and privileged in my education, but not everyone is. That’s why I started the Writing Tree back in 2011, and why it means the world to me in 2025. Everyone deserves to be able to get a little guidance to help them be the writer they want to be.

So yes. Creative Writing absolutely can be taught. And by opening ourselves to learning from others, we are one step closer to discovering our true potential.

(If you are interested in any of the topics raised in this article, I would warmly recommend the book ‘Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught?’1 which includes the views of a diverse range of writers and teachers on the topic. And do share your thoughts in the comments! )

This post brings us to the summer break for the Writing Tree. We close for the whole of August so we can all focus on our own writing and recharge our batteries to support more writers in the coming year. Our next post will be in September, when we’ll be talking about the art of close reading and how it can help us to improve our own writing. Until then, enjoy your words. I think I’ll go and sign up for an Arvon class to start my vacation in style!

We’re currently planning more Zoom classes for the autumn - if you have any ideas of topics you’d like us to cover, please let us know!