I know I can do the writing bit. It’s the ‘best-selling’ bit I’d like to do better. So I joined a Guardian Masterclass last Sunday afternoon to find out how…

I’d been on a weekend GM course before, so I knew the form. Kings Place is a mightily impressive building but it manages not to be intimidating. On the edge of the wonderful Kings Cross redevelopment, it is both cooly contemporary but also welcoming, so unlike the Step-No-Further newspaper offices of the past.

The course was led by Simon Garfield, who’s written or edited 17 non-fiction titles and whose latest, the edited diaries of an unknown Englishwoman spanning 60 years, is getting admiring reviews. Oh, to be half as creative and successful…

He was a sympathetic and helpful tutor and his unusual speech impediment made me listen to what he was saying more intently, trying to work out what combination of letters tended to trip him up. He did us (about 60 or 70 of us) the very great compliment of treating us all as professional-writers-in-waiting, though probably less than 1 in 10 had actually published anything. No matter. We were there, so we must be serious about our craft.

I’d be putting Guardian Masterclasses out of business if I repeated all his valuable tips – some of which were already painfully familiar to anyone who’d actually been through the professional publishing mill – but two small things did hit home:

• don’t talk about your book idea or work-in-progress, because every time you do, it tends to die a little for you. How true this is, so I intend to stop immediately. Which is a bit of a bummer for the future of the ‘New Projects’ section of this website…
• turn off the net when you’re writing. No-one will die if you don’t reply to emails for 24-hours (or even a week).  I can be disciplined once the study door is shut, but this doesn’t stop me reading every interesting-looking email as it pings in. Perhaps I could have finished those books weeks earlier without the pings? So I shall stop that, too.

So, in answer to the question about Masterclasses posed about a dozen posts ago, I’d say that yes, they are worthwhile. Everything you can pick up from published writers, agents and publishing professionals will help you reflect on and improve your craft.  And in the process you’re bound to get chatting to interesting people who share your passion for writing – and, who knows, other things too. What’s not to like?