How Laura
rewrote her story
with a Masters degree

From passion to profession

Laura’s path to writing began with blogging: “After I completed my degree in Event Management I spent time travelling and working in Australia, France and South Africa. I started a weekly travel blog to practise my craft and document my life and stories,” she explains.

Returning to the UK, Laura worked in a variety of roles including the University’s careers service until she felt it was time to follow her own career dreams. “The MA in Creative Writing at Derby was strongly focused towards employability,” she says. “I knew it would be the perfect place for me to go from ‘side-hustle’ into full-time employment.”

Laura discovered that the course modules are designed “to help you to become a working writer, exploring how you can and will earn a living from writing and writing-based activities as well as developing your creative practice”.

Exploring new directions

She drew particular inspiration from a module on ghostwriting. “It was something I wouldn’t have considered before taking the course. As soon as I met the tutor for ghostwriting I felt really inspired. The first week we learnt about the books he’d published and the celebrities and sports stars he was working with to ghostwrite their stories. It was really motivating to be taught by a tutor who was working in the ‘real world’ and knew the struggles and the tips to succeed.”

Support and encouragement from her lecturers have helped Laura develop the confidence to start teaching creative writing while still completing her MA, and as a result she has set up Derbyshire Writing School: “I wanted to create a place for complete beginners to live out their life-long dreams of writing books. The MA has given me the subject knowledge and academic confidence to teach in my chosen discipline. Without the encouragement from my tutors I wouldn’t be teaching others to write too.”