The Trail You Leave: An Online Writing Course

Acclaimed novelist and Artistic Director Matilda leads a writing workshop with a difference, understanding writing as a form of improvisation – one in which you leave a trail behind you… Matilda will share the beauty of writing as a tool that anyone can use, anywhere. Come one, come all – and be ready to write. 

‘What a wonderful writer. Matilda Leyser’s work is precise, poetic, hard-edged, rhythmical. It seethes with life, and feels both ancient and brand new.’ - David Almond, Author of Skellig

Full Invitation from Matilda Leyser, Co- Artistic Director at Improbable

I want to hold a writing workshop, with a difference. 

It's a workshop informed by my understanding of writing as being basically a form of improvisation in which you happen to leave a trail behind you when you do it, like a snail does. 

One of the things I love about impro is that it can be a real leveller - there is no script, so no one starts off with the main part, and there is no director. I believe writing can be this way too: nowadays - with speech dictate- you don’t even need to be able to write, but in my experience writing isn’t usually taught this way. There are many hidden, fraught hierarchies within it - who has an agent, who is published, who is not, who, in other words, can cut it - so writing workshops often have an atmosphere of secret desperation. They make me sad, whereas I think they should be joyful. Because writing is amazing, surprising: often the trail you leave behind you from this unique form of impro can turn out to be quite beautiful, or can contain extraordinary things within it which can become stories, plays, operas, songs, dances, poems, costumes, or wise instructions for what to do next in your life. 

Before I became a writer, I was an aerialist. When I wanted to practice my art, I had to hire a riggable space, get some aerial equipment, hire someone to help me rig it, get a crash mat, and ask someone to be with me while I practiced - and that was before I even began. Now I don’t need anything but a bit of paper and a pencil, and I can practice my art in the kitchen, park, on a train, in hospital, in the swimming pool changing room (I know this, because I have done it all these places). 

Writing, in other words, is a highly accessible tool. Almost anyone can do it, anywhere, and it can serve a multitude of different purposes. 

In this workshop I want to share that tool with you. It is suitable for people that long to publish stunning novels, and also for those that want to do ceramics, start a new business, or simply live their life as a work of art. We will learn some crafty things because, like all tools, there are techniques to writing - some skills to practice that can make it more effective. But the main thing is that you do it. 

So come one, come all - and be ready to write. 

Check out Matilda’s debut novel ‘No Season But The Summer’ and read more about Matilda here

The Details

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