WEBSITE: BBC Get Writing

While browsing the internet looking for an online beginners guide to poetry I found this website:

BBC Get Writing

Now I have come across this website before, a few years ago when it was a fully fledged online writing community with people posting their writing regularly, with hundreds of discussion threads at any one time. I wasn't really much more than a passing visitor, and always intended to come back one day and devote some regular time to it - as with so many other things however, it passed entirely out of mind. These days it's like a ghost town, maybe one of those trading outposts which sprung up in California during the gold rush but later abandoned when the gold ran dry. The analogy probably quite an apt one - a few years ago the BBC had a big online budget and were getting involved in many areas of online life, but these days the online budget has been cut and Get Writing was left mostly abandoned.

Having said all that, while the online community has moved elsewhere, there are still some good resources on the site. There's a good selection of articles and mini courses, divided into 'beginners', 'intermediate' and 'advanced'. Taking a look around, I'm tempted by 'How to Start a Poem', 'Rhythm, Rhyme and other Techniques', 'How to Start a Short Story' and 'The Art of Reviewing'. OK, so they all sound interesting. With my shortage of time in the run up to Christmas (Christmas shopping, house buying, going to Christmas markets in Holland and various other matters demanding my attention) I'm at the moment going to just dabble with a bit of poetry, being as I am under the possibly false impresson that it's quicker and not as time demanding as other writing forms. We'll see.