I see that the Guardian Masterclasses in writing include a two-day session called "The Fundamentals of Fiction," taught by novelist Tim Lott. It has room for 16, and it runs from 10am to 4pm. Assuming the participants take a one-hour lunch and two 15-minute breaks, that's a total of 9 hours of instruction.
The price? £449 (about $684). They do throw in lunch, though, and say you may "dress however you feel comfortable," a phrase Mr. Lott might find infelicitous.
Perhaps the Guardian will apply some of the profits from the course to hiring another copy editor. Below is a little gem from today's article about Robert Maxwell's daughter, Ghislaine. When her father's empire collapsed, it left a large hole in the pension fund of his newspaper, The Daily Mirror. Caroline Davies writes:
"His death is said to have left her 'catatonic' with grief, and it was during this period she set out to New York to rebuild her life.
Being photographed boarding Concorde to cross the Atlantic attracted the anger of Mirror pensioners."
I'm sure any graduate of the Guardian's £449 class would be able to point out that this sentence makes it sound like the pensioners were boarding the Concorde to cross the Atlantic, which seems rather unlikely.
