"You might be interested to know I received awards in two short story competitions in 2007, one in NSW and the other in South Australia, with a story [The Horse Butcher's Son] based on the one I wrote in the Writers' Studio Myth-Based Genre and Critique Course [Week 2, Thriller]

Woman's Day also published 'T-bar for Two' in their July 30, 2007 edition, based on a story I wrote in the same Myth-Based Genre and Critique Course [Week 1, Love].

Sorry to have taken so long to get back to you regarding the positive results which ensued from your inspiring course."
Cythia Rowe

"Dear Writer’s Studio. Thanks so much for yet another wonderful and very enlightening course. I have to admit I wasn’t all that interested in the genre topics when I first read them, but after digging deep and doing all the easy-to-follow steps I really surprised myself.Once again, you have proved that ‘you can always do the thing you think you can’t do’, if that makes sense. I always thought ‘I can’t do fiction, I can’t write comedy’, and how wrong I was."
Nicola Conville

MORE TESTIMONIALS FROM THE COURSE

"The genre work was a lot of fun, and I really liked having the boundaries and contraints to work with (and against!) I found writing with such attention to form and structure really liberating, which surprised me. It was really grounding to feel like I was learning from thousands of years of storytellers, emulating their structures, and creating actual 'stories', not just meanderings of thought.

But more important than any of this stuff - being able to read so many wonderful stories, being allowed to write back to the authors, and to receive feedback on my writing was just fantastic. At the times when I was feeling down on my writing, I just remembered that if I could just post something on the site, anything, I would be connected to a world of writers who are going through much the same thing. The feedback was always positive, encouraging and constructive, from all the students and Alex from the Writers' Studio. Actually Alex was awesome - even though he was feeding back to everyone on the course, his comments were always sensitive, thoughtful and positive. His advice was always helpful, caring and neutral. Good dude.

Anyway, i think the most exciting thing about the course for me was that I feel like I'm starting to think a bit like a writer. Like a writer of stories. The other day I caught myself telling a friend about a character I was writing about, and telling them what she was like and where she was from, like she was a real person. Cos for me she kinda was. It was the first time that had ever happened. Very exciting stuff :)"
Nina Gallo

"Dear Writer’s Studio. It was so much fun to break through boundaries and preconceptions and discover I could write in genres I would never have attempted solo.

Special thanks to Alex for his wonderful encouragement and feedback, and thank you too to all the writers who so generously shared their fabulous stories. It was very insightful to read and give feedback to other writers. I can really see why WS puts such an emphasis on this."
Nicola Conville

"I just want you to know that despite all your meddling I’ve completed the genre course and I loved it! I know you said that I’d never be able to write comedy or fantasy, but I did…. not exactly earth- shattering stuff, but stories that did have form.
In the past you have made it hard for me to write more than a couple of hundred words, so imagine my wonder when I’m having trouble stopping after 1700 words. Words that magically form themselves into a story with a beginning, middle and end. The only problem is I don’t want the end to come, as my mind is a million miles away in its own cinematic fantasy."
Verity Morris

The best and the worst thing about this course is that I didn’t want to stop writing. I don’t want to stop writing. I don’t want to suppress my “writer-self” in favour of “the other life” for another day. I stopped doing housework, stopped working on my thesis, stopped caring about whether I end up with “Doctor” before my name, and various letters after it in two and a half years time, stopped caring about how much money I may or may not make as a clever but soulless academic in a toxic environment. Whose life am I living, anyway? The course may be over, but the writer in me is alive again.
Rochelle Bright