Shoreham-based author and writing coach Gerry Maguire Thompson is offering a six-week course for writers at Shoreham’s brand-new bookshop Chapter 34. The course runs on Thursday evenings 7 to 8.30pm from January 25 to February 29.
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00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers. Lovely
00:06 today to be speaking to Gerry Maguire-Thompson. Now, Gerry, you are offering a writing course
00:12 and a writing and publishing course in Shoreham. It's called Write Your Book. It's six weeks,
00:19 starting end of January in Shoreham. Tell me about it. This is the third one you've
00:24 done. What do you hope to enable people to do through these six weeks?
00:28 Yes, it is a third one. It starts January 25th. I hope to be able to support a bunch
00:36 of local writers in moving forward with their book project. The course is a very practical
00:45 event where people can move forward wherever they are. Some people are right at the beginning.
00:49 They've just got an idea. They've been maybe thinking for a long time about writing a book
00:55 and maybe 2024 is when they can get on with it. Other people are a little further down
00:59 the line, but they've got obstacles or they're lacking the discipline. Some people have done
01:04 quite a lot, but they want to test out the material people or they want to think about
01:08 how they can get to publishing. So it's very pragmatically helping each person in turn
01:14 and using the resources in their own. The other students get the point is you're working
01:18 with people who, whatever stage they're at, are stuck at that stage and you are trying
01:23 to loosen things and get things moving.
01:26 Yes, they're stuck or they need to move forward. Yeah. And I would add that the week between
01:36 the classes is very helpful. That's when people get on with the work that they identified
01:40 with the last class that they needed to do.
01:42 But the context is that it's probably never been harder to get a book published, has it?
01:48 It's hugely competitive.
01:51 And broadly speaking, I think that's true. It's harder to get a publisher to publish
01:56 your work, but it's easier to self-publish. And I think if people who are going to do
02:05 that will find out how to do it and they will also make it a better book to publish it.
02:10 So I think that that's quite a number of my students in previous classes have accepted
02:17 that and they've used the class to get them to ready and to learn how to do it practically.
02:23 And presumably the point is there are things that you need to know, but you don't necessarily
02:27 know that you don't know them, I suppose.
02:30 That's right. And there's a lot of conflicting suggestions online. I think I've been in the
02:38 business of writing books and getting published for over 25 years. So I've come across a lot
02:44 of the issues that come up and I've been getting books published continuously through that
02:53 as the industry changes with the presence of the internet and so on. So I do feel I
02:58 am able to help people. Other people in the room often give valuable feedback as well.
03:03 Fantastic. And do you want to just shout out a quick way that people can contact you if
03:08 they want to sign up?
03:10 Yes. I'd love to hear from people at my website. The details for the course are on the homepage.
03:17 It's jerrymaguirethompson.com. Thompson has an H and P. If you do anything like that,
03:26 it'll probably come up quite high in the list.
03:29 So you can sign up, you can register through the website then?
03:32 Yes, you can contact me through that. People do need to book and pay in advance. It costs
03:38 £75 and that can be paid by bank transfer or PayPal.
03:43 Perfect. Good. Well, lovely to speak to you. Good luck with the course. Thank you.
03:49 Thank you so much, Phil, for this opportunity.
03:51 My pleasure.
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