Scottish Writers' Centre Writing Workshop: Imagination and Discovery

Workshop facilitator and writer Ruby McCann presents this workshop on exploring how to bring your writing to life.

Even seasoned writers sometimes have difficulties getting started on their writing. Focusing on your ideas, not knowing where to begin, having too little to say, having too much to say and not knowing exactly where you stand on an issue. Whatever your ‘writer’s block’ may be, there are development strategies that can help you get started. This workshop will help writers find the stories they were meant to write, and to develop the craft needed to tell them. Participants will come to understand the importance of substance and structure to a story, how these elements work together to create a cohesive, integrated whole to look at the world with a more careful eye.

Key elements include, point of view, setting, style, character, plot, and theme. Participants will be encouraged to write at least one draft of a story and become familiar with the basic elements of the writing process. Ruby McCann will share insights on how to bring your writing to life on the page and how to make sure your readers truly feel as though they are experiencing your story through their perspective. Come to this workshop prepared to write!

Workshop Facilitator, Ruby McCann is a writer and educator. She has managed writing projects in the United States and Scotland. In theatre, she has taken plays ‘from the page to the stage,’ teaching playwriting and drama for Washington, DC area theatres, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth Theatre and Young Playwrights Theatre. Ruby was recognised for Educational Excellence by the Senate Education Committee and the SNAP Foundation (Seeing Necessary Alternatives through Photography). She is the 2004 recipient of the Mary Boyle McCrory Award for Creative Writing. As a Literature Consultant for the Cultural Alliance of Northern Virginia, she developed, administered, and judged Arlington County’s Moving Word and Pic-A- Poet Series. After returning to Scotland, Ruby was the Scottish Book Trust’s first Writer-in- Residence at HMP Glenochil and Reader-in- Residence at A.K. Bell Library. Ruby is the current Chair of the Scottish Writers’ Centre.

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