BookBrunch - Creative writing - or creative accounting?

There's nothing wrong with writing courses per se, and I'm not criticising those who take them. As children, we've all had writing assignments to fulfil at school. "Composition" it was called in my day, though it may well have been renamed "creative writing". Those of us who've been to uni have had to write essays and perhaps dissertations - I remember a number of my classmates, more interested in performance than musical analysis, found that difficult - but everyone had to write. At all ages and stages of life, people sign up for courses to improve their golf swing or their serve and volley; they take classes in watercolour; they learn, or (like Alan Rusbridger) relearn an instrument; they go to cookery schools. All done without any plan to compete in the US Masters or at Wimbledon, or be hung in the Royal Academy, or play at the Royal Festival Hall, or to become a Michelin-starred chef. They do it for pleasure, for intellectual and /or social engagement, as something different from the day job. So, too, with many Open University students.