40-second introduction to The Writing Well

  • Reconnect with your creativity

  • Find your voice

  • Develop your practice

  • Hone your craft

  • Advance your style

  • Improve your wellbeing

About The Writing Well 

The Writing Well is a transformative and inspirational space for creative fiction and non-fiction and life writing, poetry & writing for wellbeing.

We invite you to join us to get your words written and shared, learn and hone new techniques and boost your creativity and wellbeing.

Throughout the year we host and run:

  • in-person and online workshops

  • spoken word events & competitions

  • a mentored online (drop-in) writing hive to keep you accountable to your practice

  • mentored critique circles for novelists

  • reflective writing and wellbeing courses

The website offers free resources:

  • quotes for writers

  • glossary for creative writers

  • glossary for poets

  • mini meditations to boost your creativity

  • tips and hints from published writers

Whether you are just starting on your writing journey, or you want to shape a wealth of experience on the page, if you want to write in company, concentrate on a particular aspect of your craft, attend a workshop that dives deeper into a technique or subject, or explore ways to break through your blocks and that dreaded imposter syndrome, you will find something here to suit your needs.

And if you want to carve out some mindful time for yourself on one of our writing for wellbeing courses we’ve go that too.

Have a browse through our pages and see what we offer – or drop a line to Kate through our contact page.

About Kate

I’m Kate and for over 20 years I worked in the publishing industry in London for leading commercial houses. I worked my way up from Editorial Assistant to Publisher. After I had my third child, I transitioned to consultant ‘Book Fixer’, commissioning, mentoring new writers, ghostwriting and coaching commisioned authors through creative blocks to deliver on time - while still juggling the schoolrun and playdates (I know how hard it is to fit a writing habit into a busy life). I have always written myself and have enjoyed writing lifestyle articles for magazines such as Red Magazine and The Scots Magazine. I write with a poetry group in Oxfordshire and am starting to get my poetry published in magazines such as Alchemy Spoon and Spelt Magazine. I am halfway through the first draft of an epic novel (and finding blocks of my own!). I also organize live spoken word events, in Oxford and beyond.

During lockdown, I ran a series of community poem-making events online which quickly spread to many more creative or reflective writing groups and I trained in Reflective and Therapeutic Writing Practices.

Writing is my thing; working with people to help them find their own voice is what I know.

So, out of all this experience and connection grew The Writing Well. And we continue to flourish with the help of other writers and facilitators, broadening our offerings.

A new novel is brewing

Watch this space…

Kate’s poetry

In 2017, Kate was chosen as one of the St Magnus Music Festival poets in Orkney. She is currently working toward her first pamphlet and is a member of the poetry group Sevenish. Kate attends and runs various open mic events in and around Oxford. From 2021 to 2022, she worked in collaboration with Towpath Productions to produce 'Poetry Afloat,' poetry performances on a converted theatre boat.

Kate also organizes the Spoken Word tent at the Oxford Canal Festival. Her poems have been recently published in South Bank Poetry, Alchemy Spoon, and Spelt Magazine.

‘What a Performance’ © Kate Oldfield

A Dorset Tapestry

A wide March sky,
faintly skeined in cloud.
The needling promise
of green, framed in birdsong.

Sitting back on his boot-heels,
axe flat, billhook down,
he considers the heart of the hedge;
the warp and weft of his morning.

Blackthorn tucked and send,
steeped, enmeshed.
Pleachers low, hazel-bound.
Ditch redug, damp, and black.

Beyond this hedge another
hems centuries of sheep.
Tended by father and grandfather,
flocking their timeworn yarns with care.

Suspended,
the buzzard, making time her own,
lifts and glints above the teeming threads,
until the precipitous moment,

and flight becomes
fall.


© Kate Oldfield

Published by Spelt Magazine

Credo

I believe in that line that lingers
beneath the title. Before the first word.
The space where meaning and potential mingle.

I trust in the metaphor, that lives on
long after the poet makes shape
out of stillness.

I have faith in the new image
that catches the heart
to resolve something unsaid.

To lean in to the poetry
is to know there is no cure
for this love. Let words be my witness.

I believe in the white silence
rising beyond the last inked point,
where everything waits,

and wants to be understood.

© Kate Oldfield

Published by The Alchemy Spoon Magazine

The Thames at Battersea: Nocturne in Blue and Gold

We walk the river west
to Battersea.
Cross Whistler’s tonal Thames,
bathed in evening haze.

How you love the light
and shade of London.
The ebb and flow.

The quiet spaces.

We find jazz in the park.
A clarinet rises,
shimmies,

floats.

We turn our backs,
the better to feel
the blue notes.

And all suffuse:

air,
colour,
water.


© Kate Oldfield

Published by South Bank Poetry

Kate’s YouTube channel

Watch this space - more vids coming soon!

Thanks for watching.

Kate performs ‘Mythical’ - an anagram poem at Jericho’s Lazy Sunday, Poetry Afloat event, April 22.
© Kate Oldfield