Longhand

You have a story you keep meaning to write down. Come and write it, by hand, on Tuesday evenings.

Longhand is a memoir course for adults: eight evenings, eight people around one table, a notebook each. No talent required, no reading aloud unless you want to, and at the end about twenty pages that are yours.

See the next course

A hand writing with a black pen on a sheet of lined paper, a red book at the edge of the table.

Who came to the last six courses

14

Retired, with a lifetime to fit into twenty pages

11

Parents writing something down for their children

9

People who moved countries and are starting to forget

14

People who could not say why, and did not need to

Seen from above: hands writing in a notebook on a wooden table beside a coffee cup, glasses, instant photographs and a tablet.

Next course · starts Tuesday 7 January

Eight evenings, twenty pages

Two hours each, 19:00 to 21:00, in the back room of a bookshop. Tea at half time. You write in the room, not at home; homework is optional and most people do it anyway.

  • Eight evenings, eight places£240
  • Notebook and pencil, if you want oursincluded
  • One written response to your pagesincluded
  • Two places each course at half priceask, no reason needed
Hold a place
A hand in a grey jumper writing with a red pen in a notebook with a red ribbon.

The eight evenings

A woman sitting with a notebook on her lap, writing, her canvas shoes on a concrete floor.

  1. A room you remember. Everything in it, before anyone walks in.

  2. One object. Something you owned that is gone, and where it went.

  3. A voice. Someone's way of speaking, written so we hear it.

  4. The day it changed. One day, told slowly.

  5. What you left out. Going back to the first three and adding what hurt.

  6. Other people. Writing about the living without starting a family war.

  7. Order. Putting the pages in a sequence that is not always the calendar.

  8. The last page. An ending, and what you do with the twenty pages next.

Try it now · the exercise from week three · ten minutes

A voice

Think of someone who has died or whom you no longer see, whose way of speaking you can still hear.

Write down three things they said often. Not wise things; ordinary ones. What they said when they came into a room.

Now write the moment they said one of them, with where they were standing and what they were holding.

Stop at ten minutes, even mid-sentence. Read it the next morning, not tonight.

If that was worth ten minutes, the course is sixteen hours of it, with seven other people and someone to read it back to you.

An open book with fanned pages against a pale pink background. A printed page with the word Steps circled in green highlighter.
A wall of old cloth-bound books stacked flat in coloured piles.
A black pen lying on an open spiral notebook next to a laptop on a dark wooden desk. Loose sheets of paper and a blank printed form spread across a white desk.

Before you sign up

Do I have to read aloud?
Never. About half the room does by week four, because they want to. Nobody is asked.
Can I type?
In the room, no — it is part of the point. At home, of course. Everyone types it up in the end.
Is it therapy?
No, and I am not a therapist. If writing brings something up that needs more than a writing group, I will say so kindly.
Missing an evening
You get the exercise by post the next day. No refunds after the second evening, but you can move to the next course once.

Eight places, starting in January

Hold a place with a phone call. You pay on the first evening, after you have seen the room.

Call to hold a place