Driving Out Drivel

Dingwall-based ANDREA MUIR records her adventures on the writing course at the Arvon Foundation’s centre in deepest Devon.

Amongst the bits of scrap paper, straightened paper clips and fuzzed up Post It notes I found the Arvon Foundation Brochure.

‘The Arvon Foundation is an organisation that provides writing courses for anyone who has a genuine desire to write,’ it said.  Well, that’s me, I thought.
 

I had been on an Arvon course at Moniack Mhor last year and it really made a difference to my writing and to me.  So, I flicked the pages of the brochure and then despondently realised that all the courses would be booked up and anyway, I couldn’t afford to go. 

However, distraction techniques are great and I discovered, at the back of the brochure, that there were two Selected Advanced Fiction courses being offered - one at Lumb Bank in Yorkshire and one at Totleigh Barton in Devon.  To be selected you had to send off a ‘Writing CV’, a synopsis and ten pages of the novel you were working on. 

There was no way I would be selected.  Of this I was sure. Real writers would be selected.  Writers with BA’s and MA’s and talent would be selected. 

So, in the full and happy knowledge that nothing would come of it other than a distraction filled afternoon – I battered out a writing CV, and put in an envelope along with my ten pages of the novel that I was avoiding work on and sent if off.
 

3 November 2003 

So, here I am at Totleigh Barton. Not only did I get selected – obviously - but the Arvon Foundation and HI-Arts supplied the funds that have made it all possible. (Thank you! Thank you!) I’ve had one of the longest journeys of my life. Dumped Mum and Dad at my sister’s in Cardiff on Saturday and then spent two deeply disconcerting nights sleeping on an airbed on the floor at her house.  Airbeds are strange things.
 

Then today I drove from Cardiff to darkish Devon.  Dusk was falling and the country lanes were canopied with tangly trees covered in varying amounts of rusty foliage. (You see – the inspiration is thrumming already!)

I was greeted by Ian Marchant, one of the Directors of the Centre, who showed me to me room which is in a block that used to house pigs.  Ian is good bloke.  The room is fine, so shall go and explore.
 

Met the others – seem all right but then appearances can be deceptive. 

Sat next to Andrew Greig at dinner.
 

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