IGNOU Course

It didn't work for me. It may not for you either, in all probability.

In a course for creative writing, you expect you will write something, discuss each other's creative output (without hanging your head in shame when your literary baby comes up, hopefully), improve upon your effort, learning all the while. Instead, what you get in IGNOU is a set of booklets. These booklets define creative writing, lists authors who have wielded this skill exceptionally well, sights a few paragraphs of their work here and there and forgets to tell, tell you till you get it, how they are great.

To be fair to IGNOU, it is a correspondence course. So One cant expect much of class room discussions anyway. There are supposed to be some contact sessions. And It also has a requirement that you write something and submit to the university which will be reviewed. But let's face it. I called the contact number in Bangalore a dozen times over a period of a month. Nobody picks up and if anybody did, I was told that a card will intimate me the timing of the contact classes. I actually joined IGNOU so that I will get a chance that my output will be reviewed critically by somebody who knows his stuff and help me improve it. If that is your aim too, you better drop the idea of joining IGNOU.

If you want to join IGNOU to learn the basics and get a list of reference books, why dont you start with Google the fountain of all information. Just type Creative writing in that google search bar and there you go, you have saved the money that you were about to spend on IGNOU. Also follow this blog as I do intend to get to write about what I have learnt since I typed that two words in google a good six years back!

A disclaimer, I signed up for IGNOU course five years back. This rant was based on my experience then. Things might have changed in IGNOU now. For the beter, I hope.