Back then, you felt a moment of thrill when your teacher handed you your marked essay, an A scrawled across the top! How you loved creating whole new worlds with words. Then, life happened.
Slowly at first, and then faster, creativity slipped between the cracks. These days, you specialise in juggling your job, being the family GPS system, the human calendar and the finder of lost rugby boots. You remember everyone’s medical appointments, hunt down permission slips and somehow, you always know where the good scissors are hiding. Your own dreams? They’ve been filed somewhere between ‘maybe later’ and ‘when the kids leave home’.
But here’s what you need to know: your creativity hasn’t packed up and moved to Australia. It’s been sitting there quietly, waiting for you to stop folding everyone else’s washing long enough to remember it exists.
You don’t need permission to do creative writing
Here’s the truth: every published author started exactly where you might be right now, wondering if they should write, or wondering if they’re fooling themselves, secretly terrified that they’ve got nothing interesting to say.
A writing course isn’t about transforming you into Eleanor Catton overnight. It’s about giving you one small corner of the world where you get to matter first.
The beautiful confusion of beginning again
You know what happens in our writing courses? Magic disguised as assignments. You’ll sit down to write about your grandmother’s pavlova recipe and somehow end up with the story about that Christmas Day your extended family almost came to blows over a burnt turkey. You’ll remember the summer you were eight and were convinced you could talk to the pōhutukawa tree in your backyard.
Your imagination hasn’t shrivelled up like a wrinkled kūmara in the back of the cupboard; it’s just been waiting for you to give it some attention. And trust me, once you start paying attention to the stories swimming around in your head, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without this creative exploration.
Here’s something that might surprise you: the best stories aren’t about climbing Everest or discovering new planets. They’re about Tuesday afternoons and the way your teenager’s face changes when they think you’re not watching. They’re about the exact colour of Auckland harbour on the day you decided to leave or stay.
You’ve been living a life full of stories – small, perfect, heartbreaking, hilarious stories – and thinking they don’t count because they’re not dramatic enough. But ordinary life is where all the real treasure is buried. You just need someone to show you how to start digging.
One-on-one with someone who actually gets it
Here’s what’s different about learning to write with us: you get a real human being, an award-winning author who’s also navigating this wonderful, occasionally soul-crushing business of putting words on paper.
Not a computer program. Not a YouTube video. A living, breathing person who understands that some days the words flow and other days they trickle. Someone who knows when to push you a little harder and when to remind you that rough drafts are supposed to be terrible (that’s literally their job description).
Your tutor becomes your first believer, the person who sees the story buried in your rambling first attempt and helps you dig it out without losing what makes it uniquely yours.
Your dreams are tougher than you think
Those stories you’ve been carrying around, the ones you think are too silly or too small or too late? They’re tougher than you think. They’ve survived years of you being ‘practical’ and ‘sensible’ and putting everyone else’s needs first. They’re still there, waiting.
Maybe you want to write a romance novel that doesn’t make you roll your eyes. Maybe you’ve got a children’s story about a wētā with anxiety or a memoir about growing up in small-town New Zealand that you’re pretty sure no one else would understand but somehow keeps tugging at your sleeve.
Maybe you just want to write emails that don’t sound like they were composed by a robot.
Whatever it is, it matters. It matters because it’s yours and you’re the only person on the planet who can tell it the way you would.
Gentle, flexible and entirely yours
Our writing courses are designed for people who’ve been taking care of everyone else for so long they’ve forgotten what it feels like to have someone take care of them. They’re gentle because creativity needs tenderness, not criticism. They’re flexible because life is messy and sometimes the cat throws up on your manuscript.
They’re entirely yours because, maybe for the first time in years, you get to be the main character in your own story. You’ve spent years making everyone else’s dreams possible. What if, just for an hour or two a week, you made your own dreams possible too?
We’ve helped thousands of students since 2005 write their stories. People just like you who thought maybe, possibly, they might have a story worth telling.
Stop waiting for perfect
Wait for the perfect conditions and you’ll never start. You don’t need a dedicated writing room (a corner of the kitchen table works beautifully). You don’t need expensive notebooks or the perfect pen or absolute silence or for the children to become self-sufficient.
You just need to begin. Messy, imperfect, slightly terrified, entirely hopeful.
Your stories are waiting.
Ready to begin? Our creative writing courses are designed for real people with real lives who want to remember what it feels like to create something beautiful. No degrees required. No perfect conditions necessary. Just you and your stories.
Explore our creative writing courses here.
