A New Project for Me!
It was a few years ago that I first talked to the Royal Literary Fund about their Fellowship scheme.
As a concept, it takes some beating, I think. Going to university is a difficult time for many students: they have a whole new lifestyle to get used to, without parents and friends. A whole new world of responsibility, study and hard work (in most cases!), and one aspect is the writing of grown-up essays.
Most universities do all they can to make the experience as non-threatening as possible, but it still creates a lot of tension and alarm.
Students arrive and are given a reading list. The first thing many of them will do is, buy all the books and try to read them all. Then, they learn the hideous truth, that academic books are all but unreadable. And they believe that this is a writing style which they must emulate.
It's enough to make any sane person want to throw their books in the nearest river and leave to become a full-time road-sweeper.
And it was for this that the Fellowship was started some years ago.
RLF Fellows go and work for a couple of days a week in various universities up and down the country. They offer themselves to the students just to help them with their writing. Not the content, incidentally, but just the writing itself.
Students who are petrified with terror at the thought of writing a piece on a given subject, need all the help they can get. And sometimes a tutor or lecturer is not the person in whom they feel comfortable in confiding. That is why the RLF Fellows are instructed to maintain absolute confidentiality in all their discussions and work with students.
Well, I am delighted to have heard that the RLF and Exeter University have accepted my application to work with them later this year.
No, it doesn't mean I won't be writing. I still have my contracts to work to, and I will be fulfilling them. But for me to be able to get out of the house a couple of times a week, to meet with new people, and to have a chance of learning a little more about how young people speak and think.
For more information on the Royal Literary Fund and the Fellowship scheme, please go to http://www.rlf.org.uk/index.cfm and use the tabs at the top of the page.
Tagged: books, crime writing, Exeter University, Fellowship Scheme, publishing, Royal Literary Fund, writing
