Writers don’t need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing – a sunset or an old shoe – in absolute and simple amazement.
― Raymond Carver, Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories
Kent parent (Zoom, Creative Writing, GCSE)
‘Jacqueline has been amazing with my daughter in Year 11 boosting her confidence in creative writing to the extent she actually enjoys it!. Jacqueline has a lovely mannerism, calm, engaging, personable and great at providing constructive timely feedback. Exactly what my daughter needs heading into her GCSES. Thank you very much.’
Cranbrook parent (Creative Writing course, year 9)
‘these sessions are incredibly helpful… I dare to say that since you’re giving her Creative Writing tasks, her love for drawing has returned too!’
Cranbrook parent (Creative Writing course, year 9)
‘We want to say a big thank you, and it was great to work with you and learn more about writing.’
Thank you very much for this feedback and all the feedbacks before this! [The student’s] English grade was totally excellent…
– Parent of a Year 9 Creative Course student (July 2025)
I offer tailored writing courses in blocks of 12 weeks which are very successful for GCSE preparation (creative writing is 50% of the English Language GCSE), as well as younger years.
Each session focuses on some reading, a longer creative writing prompt, together with a shorter activity, and the student does writing for up to an hour in their own time.
They then send me their finished writing (either scanned, on a Word document/Google doc or a photo via a parent’s WhatsApp) and I give a page of detailed, helpful feedback and encouragement, or recorded video feedback.
We cover different genres, including poetry, flash fiction and screen writing, and the course is matched to personal interests (including academic aims such as scholarships, GCSEs or 11+).
Fiction Writing
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
–Jack Kerouac
For those who would like a step-by-step approach to crafting a story, I do a more structured course where we focus on reading and analysing story extracts and focusing on a particular aspect of constructing a story each week. Again, this is tailored to the current ability of the student.
Interested in more information? Pop here for prices or here to ask questions.
And why Creative Writing for younger students? (it doesn’t have to be about exams)
If I stood in front of you right now and said, Please tell me a story, how would you feel?
When I first said that to one student I tutored, as I closed the book of Noodlehead Stories we had been reading, he looked at me with that look — that, You are really giving me permission? look, then he stood up and paced the room, a cliché of delightful action, before starting to tell me his story.
But his story had really started before I finished saying ‘story’ and even the school bell sounding twice, and me packing up my papers, wouldn’t stop him. He had literally walked right into a story and he found it was a place where he could finally be himself, yet not mention himself at all.
Fact and fiction need to share a room in a child’s life. They need to top-and-tail in bed and stay up late, giggling under the covers and shining the torch in each other’s face. Sometimes they’ll argue, but mostly, they’ll just want to be together when it is too dark to stay on the swing, and too early to overfill cereal bowls with Coco Pops. If one gets kicked out the bed for a bad smell, or just being, the other will quickly feel lonely and a small hand will shoot out to welcome them back into the blanket bunker, no questions asked. No apologies expected.
Yet something comes along between primary school and mid-teens and even when we want to tell a story, it seems as though someone has just said, Climb this rockface. No pressure, just get to the top, and don’t pause; don’t make contorted faces; and don’t inhale air. Just climb. And by the way, in case you wondered — everyone falls.
So what if your young person wants to write, but the potential stories stare down at them from a high shelf and they can’t find a stool to even read the spines? Sharing a bed with anything resembling their own creative fiction is, well, likely to remain a fiction, and the crocodiles of sleepless, storyless nights (and days) are snapping at their heels…
The solution?
✨ A creative writing correspondence course! ✨