Lesson Nine: Keep Human

“You’re in the middle of writing something and your mind goes blank… ok, you’re being warned, aren’t you?” Discover Ray Bradbury’s simple trick for overcoming writer’s block.

Contemporary novelist Caryl Phillips close reads a dramatic passage from ‘Another Country’ by James Baldwin to see what we can learn from the great American writer.

If you’re going to put your work out in the world, then sooner or later, someone’s going to take a pop at it. This lesson features tips on handling critics from novelists John Fowles and Graham Greene, plus some unexpected behaviour from Henry James.

“Easy reading is damned hard writing,” says Maya Angelou. Hear the many pains she takes to ‘sharpen her language’ in this lesson about revising your work.

Hear how Graham Greene gradually evolves a character – and a novel - on a research trip to a leper colony in the Congo.

Sometimes the world gives writers a location so atmospheric it’s just waiting for a back story. But how do we do it justice? Poet Ted Hughes, diarist Christopher Isherwood and Vladimir Nabokov on capturing the soul of a place in words.

How often do you get the chance to attend a lecture by one of the Beats? An extraordinary opportunity to spend time with poet Allen Ginsberg, as he explains Jack Kerouac’s theory of writing.

If you want to write good dialogue, you need good ears. Listen to all the little idiosyncrasies of an individual voice: the cadences, elisions, flourishes. With an extended reading from short-story writer and poet, Grace Paley.

Waiting for the muse to strike? Give it up and get writing. Here are five creation stories from the archives to inspire you, from novelists Beryl Bainbridge, John Fowles, Daphne du Maurier, Roald Dahl and Ray Bradbury.

In praise of day-dreaming, holidays and playing hookey: this lesson exalts the importance of time off. Go to the pub with W.B. Yeats, flit through the airport with Noel Coward, and wander the streets of Paris with Henry Miller.