So you want to be a writer? New website from Falmouth shows you how

Literary agents, TV executives and bestselling authors have given their support to an innovative new website from MA Professional Writing at University College Falmouth (UCF), which helps aspiring writers to develop their work and launch a career.

www.profwriting.com offers affordable online writing courses, a space to showcase manuscripts and have them critiqued by peers, and a three-month mentoring scheme pairing new writers with an expert in their field. There are masses of insider tips and interviews with successful authors plus constantly updated news from the worlds of publishing, copywriting and screenwriting. With a range of short courses and private forums for pitching ideas and browsing freelance opportunities, it's everything an aspiring writer could need.

Literary Agent Mark Lucas ­- who represents bestselling writers including Kate Mosse and Andy McNab - says the site offers new writers the opportunity to serve a writing apprenticeship before going public with their work: "Nowadays if a new writer doesn't get it right first time, they are history. What this kind of opportunity offers is the chance to serve a kind of apprenticeship."

John Yorke, Controller of Drama Production and New Talent at the BBC, adds: "Writing is such a lonely profession and it seems so hard to get a job; anything that takes away some of the mystery and fear can only be a good thing."

The site has been developed by the team behind MA Professional Writing at University College Falmouth, whose approach to teaching writing is so successful that graduates get published and work across the writing industries, running magazines, editing scripts, reinventing brands such as Sky and HMV, and even penning librettos for operas...

www.profwriting.com allows aspiring writers to share that expertise and get noticed, too, wherever they live and whichever genre they are working in. Industry scouts are combing the site already and the team have lined up an impressive roster of experts to offer advice and judge regular writing competitions. They include bestselling author, Patrick Gale; winner of the prestigious Frank O'Connor Award for short stories, Simon van Booy; and docudrama producer, Hannah Sim.

Associate of the site, Radio 4 scriptwriter and producer, Paul Dodgson sums it up: "It will be a great place for scriptwriters to go as well as fiction writers. I like to think that every genre of writing will find its place on the site."

You can watch a short film of the profwriting.com launch event at http://www.profwriting.com/launch

For further information about MA Professional Writing at University College Falmouth, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/professionalwriting, email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 214374.

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the powers to award degrees in its own name.  It has two campuses in Cornwall - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns, and jointly manages with the University of Exeter) - and a third campus at Totnes in Devon, following its merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008.

This merger created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Choreography, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing.  The Devon-based courses will relocate to a new, high-specification Performance Centre at Tremough in 2010, paving the way for a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2012/2013 that will be unique to the South West.

The College is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

Ends

For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email:  jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk 

Notes to editors

The MA in Professional Writing at University College Falmouth has built a strong reputation for giving talented writers the focused skills they need to make successful careers in many different areas of the media.

The course can be studied full-time over one year or part-time by distance learning over two years.

Several alumni have published books, while others are working as magazine and website editors, freelance features journalists, scriptwriters, creative copywriters, and in a wide range of publishing and corporate communications roles.

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