The Portable Creative Writing Workshop


Handbook for writers of poetry and short fiction with practical advice, technical information and contributions from Seamus Heaney, Maeve Binchy, Roddy Doyle and many others

(New Island, 2005)

"It looks great and will fly into bestsellers!"
-- CAROLINE WALSH, Literary Editor, THE IRISH TIMES

"In this book Boran, an old hand at the game of teaching
what can't be taught, sets out many
of the secrets of the craft. Excellent."
-- IRISH INDEPENDENT

"A treasure-trove of sound advice."
--TONY CURTIS, THE IRISH TIMES

Reviews of this book.

How do writers practice?
What do they do to warm up?
When they have no ideas, do they write at all?

Whether you belong to a writing workshop running low on steam, or you're struggling to continue working on your own, this book offers a wide range of games and exercises to help stimulate you in your writing.

In three main sections covering The Raw Material, Poetry and Fiction, prize-winning poet and fiction writer Pat Boran takes a hands-on approach to the creative writing process.

Through some 200 pages of games, exercises and challenges, he not only explains many of the techniques and central concepts of creative writing, but he also shows how these can be put to work in your writing.

The book concludes with a section in which dozens of well-known poets and writers (among them Maeve Binchy, Eavan Boland, Dermot Bolger, Billy Collins, Tony Curtis, Michael Dibdin, Gerard Donovan, Roddy Doyle, Peter Finch, Seamus Heaney, Christopher Hope, Paul Muldoon, Joseph O'Connor, Andrew O'Hagan, Jane Urquhart and Marina Warner)-- contribute their own ideas and advice.