Student Profiles

The course is a good balance of creative and critical work. I particularly enjoy working with other writers – both my fellow students and our tutors – reading and critiquing each other’s work, which has helped me hone my own drafting process at the same time. The critical units are also enjoyable, analysing texts (post-war and contemporary literature) to see how different authors employ different narrative techniques and devices to elevate their storytelling. Literature is an endless resource and mining that resource is a great pleasure – on the course I’m able to couple this with my own writing practices; adopting and adapting techniques from literary greats in the hope of improving my own work.

Man Met has helped me to develop my technique and given me the confidence to pursue a career in writing. I have also come to be more objective when critiquing my own work – something that I struggled with previously.

Research. The Manchester Writing School website has almost all the information you could ask for about the Creative Writing courses run at Man Met and it is very easy to navigate. Beyond that, come to open days and course fairs, and speak with tutors and students involved on the course. Everyone is incredibly friendly and will answer your questions – they did for me!

…the world around me. I am not like Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett, I don’t have a wildly vivid imagination and so I draw greatly on the real world, on events that are talking place all around us, all the time, in my own writing. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

The best thing about Man Met, for me, is the sense of community: you are surrounded by like-minded individuals, all of whom are engaged in similar interests and, particularly on the Creative Writing courses, are always happy to support you in your work.