Plus Writing Home Creative Writing Retreats, Tutoring and Business Name Origination

Coaching

Writing your life’s project (or even just that work report) can feel daunting. I will encourage you to start that novel or piece, guide and prompt you with it, as well as helping you to plan. I will help you discover the process that works best for you, give you honest, constructive feedback, and support you in meeting your writing goals.

Coaching offers you organisational help, critical feedback for each stage of the process, and emotional support for you in your work. Coaching will help you to write clearly and effectively. Using industry contacts, I can offer some advice on what to submit to publishers, plus when and how to send it. I can also help you with the covering letter.

I trained as a humanistic psychotherapist from 1990 to 1994 and maintain best practice to protect client confidentiality. I hold enhanced CRB clearance.

If you like, I can devise a six- or twelve-week course to get you through writer’s block.

Charges and Availability

Charges can come down for block bookings. At the moment  winter 2012) I am charging £40 per hour.

I am available for one-to-one meetings in the Bristol/Bath area (free initial meeting). This might also be possible in Liverpool, London, Cardiff, Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Alicante and other European cities. Alternatively, this can take place by email and/or phone contact.

I am available to feed back on your proofreading corrections, once I have read your work, and to help you develop your writing. I will send you documents before we meet, with tips on avoiding the most common errors that people make in particular sorts of writing assignments.

I also provide fun corporate workshops and school INSET days on commonly-made mistakes in grammar, punctuation and spelling. These are priced at £150 per half-day workshop.

Writing Home Personalised Retreats for less than half the cost of writing centres

Want to make headway? Writing centres cost too much (£700 per week)?

They say to write about the devil you know, so why not reclaim your home for that long-awaited work? It can become a guided writing zone for just £310 per week (other periods possible).

I am a professional poet/editor with a Portuguese publisher, Visiting Lecturer at Univresity of the West of England, and have proof-read poetry collections for Poetry Can. I help novelists and other authors, and my co-written book of travel impressions (hidden Spain) is, so to speak, in the can for early 2012.

I’ll read and evaluate your work beforehand, then at the beginning of your retreat we’ll meet for two hours to discuss your needs and your work (I’ll make your telly disappear!). I’ll coach you through your writing and blocks then and at the end, and at least once in the middle. I’ll provide written feedback on your work afterwards too, at significant discount, and will be available for phone support throughout.

I can set exercises, help reawaken passions, dissipate fears, start or restart you, keep you focused and reinvigorate your writing. I’ll help you find which processes work best for you, give you good, gritty feedback, and support you in meeting goals.

I am available in the Bristol/Avon area for low-cost coaching of any duration, and worldwide for cheapest travel costs. I have a cost-free international accommodation network.

Tutoring, English Lit and Language

I have helped individual degree students at Bath Spa University, and am a Visiting Lecturer at the University of West of England. I have also taught students on an individual basis to A-level standard in English Literature and English Language, for a tutoring agency (anysubject.com).

I hold enhanced CRB clearance, and am clear about boundaries.

I am available for weekly 1:1 sessions in the Bristol area, or more frequently if you wish. I am also available for intensive programmes over a period of weeks by negotiation, in European cities. I will need to charge for travel costs, but I hope to use an international network (www.couchsurfing.com) for cost-free accommodation.

I can also teach English (UCLES/CELTA qualified) at your European home on an intensive basis, or on Skype.

My rates are £30, or the same number of Euros, per hour.  Discounts will be available on block bookings of multi-hour sessions: two hours at Eu/£55, three hours at 84; a full five-hour day will cost £140, and could take place over a six-hour period.

Copywriting

I am available for copywriting at £30 per hour; I will send you a quote. I can visit you in the Bristol, Bath or London areas, as well as European cities, to get your brief and discuss keywords, or we can communicate via phone/Skype and emails.

Whatever your assignment, you can always be assured of a concise, quality service. I will work to give your material an edge of professional or creative credibility, sending you drafts of each page ongoingly, rather than delaying you at the end of the process.

Business Name Origination

I can also help you originate names for businesses. Simply email me a few lines about the nature of your proposed business  and the name of the town/city in which you are about to open it. For example, a Zen Buddhist centre in a southern French city could do worse to attract media attention than calling itself Nothing Toulouse. If you don’t want to deal with the World’s media, you can send them to me.

If I come up with the business name that you eventually use (I’ll let you know if I’ve come up with something within three working days), I will charge you just £200; if not, nothing is lost either way. And if your turnover exceeds £100,000 in the first two years, using my suggested trade-name, you can afford to let me have a further £200. This will all be set out in a simple contract.

Not all of my ideas rely on the name of the town, city or county, however; at the moment (summer 2011), I have equally striking names for a camping shop, a cheese shop, and an eco-electrical retailer, all of which could be located anywhere. Having said that, I do have an amazing name for a new-age clothes shop which should set up in Cornwall, if you should happen to know anyone who wants to set the trend.

I welcome civic representatives of whole towns who would like their location to gain press and map coverage for a theme-related series of innovative shop- and business-names.