Want to improve your writing and discover the secrets of the craft? Send a message and book your first lesson!
The craft
What the programme is
The programme is one-to-one work on literary prose — the sentence, the scene, and the patience a book asks of you. It is not a copywriting academy, not a weekend of prompts, and not a promise that anyone becomes a novelist in a season.
You write. We read. We talk about what the text is doing, not what you hoped it would do. The work is slow on purpose: how a paragraph holds, how a character conceals, how a world is built without explaining itself to death.
The aim is a clearer ear for your own sentences, and the discipline to finish. Creative writing here means artistic prose — fiction that wants to be literature — not marketing copy and not content for a feed.
This is tuition in the old sense: a reader who writes, sitting with another writer over a page until the sentences tell the truth of their own making.
Who it is for
Writers at three thresholds
The lessons suit three kinds of writer, and they overlap more often than not.
- Beginners who want to write fiction and do not yet know where a first chapter begins.
- People who already have a manuscript — a scene, a pile of chapters, a novel that will not close.
- Readers who have lived in books long enough to want to make one.
You do not need to have published. You do not need to write fantasy. You do not need to have read Kalemovi Tirualije. You need a willingness to sit with the page and to hear what it is actually doing.
Belgrade
How the work looks
Lessons are individual, arranged after an enquiry. There is no group workshop, no public timetable, and no package sold from a price list.
We meet in person in Belgrade. If you cannot come into the city, we can work online; that is decided after your message, not advertised as a separate product.
- Write an enquiry about your prose and whether you can meet in Belgrade.
- We agree a first lesson in person — or online if coming into the city is not possible.
- Bring a page, a scene, or an honest blank start. Terms are agreed individually.
The first step is the form below. Write what you are trying to make, where you are stuck, and whether you can meet in Belgrade. Terms are agreed individually so the work can fit the manuscript rather than a syllabus copied for everyone.
A lesson is conversation about your text, not a lecture with slides. We stay with what is on the page that day — a scene that will not turn, a voice that slips, a beginning that apologises too much.
The mentor
Milan Graorinov
Milan Graorinov is a Serbian novelist. He graduated in Russian language, literature and culture from the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, completed a master's in Russian literature, and is a doctoral candidate in comparative literature.
He has been writing since he was seventeen. The novel Kalemovi Tirualije took thirteen years. The programme grows from that practice — from the literature of the Russian Golden Age as much as from experimental fantasy — not from a teaching franchise.
Questions
Before you write
Are the lessons one-to-one or in a group?
They are one-to-one. There are no group workshops and no open enrolment dates.
Where do the lessons take place?
In person in Belgrade. If you cannot meet there, online work can be arranged after we talk.
Is there a public price?
No. Send an enquiry; terms are agreed individually so the work can fit the manuscript.
Is this for beginners?
Yes. Beginners and people who already have a manuscript are both welcome. The first message should say where you are.
What should I bring to the first lesson?
A sample of your writing if you have one — a scene, a chapter, even a page — and a clear note of what you want the work to become. If you have nothing yet, say so.
Do I need to have read your novel?
No. The lessons are about your prose, not a book club on Tirualia.