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As part of the #SENSE2020 Jubilee Workshop series, our very own Professional Development Coordinator Matthew Curlewis will be offering language professionals a chance to work on their writing skills. Rather than a one-off event like the workshop Ros Schwartz facilitated in January of 2020, Matthew’s Stretch & Tone workshop cycle will be a six-week process, allowing attendees to practice and hone their skills along the way. John Linnegar asks him a few questions about the workshop and the format.
JL: Some may feel registering for your course is a big time commitment. Others may be thinking twice about spending €180. So what would your response be to convince them to register?
MC: This workshop is about the process of writing; the ‘doing’ of it. Would you take one yoga class and then think you were done with yoga? Probably not. You might try different groups of classes in different styles – perhaps in Hatha, Iyengar and Bikram yoga, before settling on Kundalini yoga as your preferred technique – but your study of the other three will always have been useful to support your final choice.
The Writers’ Stretch & Tone workshop cycle loosens you up by having you write some fiction one week, a screenplay excerpt another, a poem another day – in a very similar manner – all these writings will work cumulatively, to improve your overall skills as a writer.
JL: What benefit, would you say, will attending your writing course have on a translator? And on an editor? Even, perhaps, a copywriter?
MC: When writing emerges at its best, people will say it ‘flows’. The words lead to sentences, which lead to paragraphs in a pleasing manner, and you are guided as a reader. Whether you’re translating or editing someone else’s writing, or whether you’re copywriting from scratch, ideally your writing should flow beautifully, rather than sounding awkward and haphazard, like an incompetent machine has done the translating.
JL: In January this year, we had a full-house workshop facilitated by Ros Schwartz (translator extraordinaire) about how improving your writing skills makes you a better translator. She had some powerful messages to share, and the impact of her approach among the attendees was overwhelmingly positive, inspiring, etc on the mainly translators who attended. Would you say that your course of workshops, and sharpening one's writing skills, will have the same effect?
MC: What we do in Writers’ Stretch & Tone workshops is get comfortable with letting our words come out, we get comfortable with covering empty pages with fresh new words, we find out how to make our words, our copy, and our writing, flow. At the end of the course, your ‘writing muscles’ will be stronger and more flexible, and you will feel fitter as a writer. As a result, you’ll be more comfortable taking on complex writing challenges.
Are you ready to stretch and tone your own writing skills? Sign up for Matthew’s workshop cycle on the Events page!