IT’S a familiar response to reams of corporate documents - "Who writes this drivel?" But how many times have you sat at your desk, devoid of inspiration, with an hour to deliver a board paper or mailout, and glumly resorted to joining a bunch of cliches together with jargon? We all do it, but the Dark Angels want to change our lives.

 

According to their website, Dark Angels teach you "how to use words more imaginatively and engagingly in the business environment". I'm a freelance writer, and I work in the arts, but I'm not immune to producing appalling trash, and I felt I could use some divine intervention. The intensive induction course, held over three days in a baronial mansion near Biggar, seemed perfect.

 

But on the day I'm not so sure. I'm lost, somewhere past Peebles. I've missed the welcome drinks and I'm having disturbing visions of gothic angel cults and marketing executives in kaftans sobbing out their sonnets. The looming iron gates to Toftcombs House, when I finally locate them, bear a sinister message.

 

"The gate is broken," reads the sign. "Gabriel and Azrael say sorry. Please go back onto the main road and..." That's enough. Any second now, my creativity is about to release itself in some truly imaginative swearing.

 

Enter Jamie Jauncey and Stuart Delves, the irrepressibly genial course leaders., who usher me along marble-and-gilt corridors, soothe me with wine and fish pie, and introduce me to the others. There are nine of us - from brand management and internal comms, from corporations and quangos - and the atmosphere is already established, somewhere between a luxury retreat and a haphazard house-party.

 

Delves is a published poet and performed playwright. Jauncey is a successful author for teenagers, whose most recent novel is shortlisted for the prestigious Royal Mail Awards. Each of them has more than 25 years' experience as corporate writers and they are fired with missionary zeal. "We feel that business language has taken a serious wrong turn," they explain. "It's not efficient as a language any more because it doesn't make human connections."

 

So, how do they remedy this? Over the next two days we write poems, six-word stories, made-up myths, and pieces of autobiography. We do "automatic" writing and descriptive writing. We invent ludicrous products. We meditate on the powers of metaphor and story. We immerse ourselves in writing and work furiously, in secret, on our "personal pieces", which we have to perform on the last night.

 

In between, Delves brings us home-cooked food. Jauncey introduces group chanting, in Latin. We all do the washing-up. "It's really weird," says Simon, who's in broadcasting. "It's the only course I've ever been on where there isn't anyone you don't want to sit next to."

 

And everyone in the group begins to react For some, the freedom of self-expression is overwhelming and there are outbreaks of weeping, as people touch on unexpected memories and emotions. "God, I feel like the Duracell bunny," yells Dave from BP, at the other end of the spectrum, all fired up to storm the corporate ram¬parts with the joy of creativity.

 

On the last morning, everyone agrees it's been amazing - and the Dark Angels assure me it's always like this. Jauncey says: "It's difficult for us to evaluate, because we never get any bad feedback."

 

Delves suggests: "It's because the atmosphere's so congenial."

 

For some, like Kirsty, it's been a personal revelation. "I always wanted to be a writer," she says, "but I was terrified. Now I feel really inspired and confident. I’ve definitely been on an emotional journey."

 

She's not the only one to discover literary aspirations. Laura Forman went on the first Dark Angels course in 2004 and described it as "incredibly important - a re-awakening of my own creativity". As well as continuing a successful career in brand consultancy, Forman is now a published poet.

 

Delves and Jauncey insist this isn't about therapy, or about people becoming literary writers, though they acknowledge that the boundaries can get blurred and hint that, for some, it is a "life-changing experience". For Delves, the course is "hard-wired into a real business benefit" and the level of personal exposure is relative to the gains. "You've got to be up for an adventure."

 

But what's it like when the journey's over, the atmosphere wears off, and you're back at your desk with the same old bumf to deliver? Jauncey says: "For some people, it's very difficult to go back to the hostile corporate environment. Here, you're supported, but there, you're on your own. People can find that they've got big battles to fight when they go back. The benefits aren't always immediately apparent, because some of this goes in at a deep level, under the radar, and takes a while to come through.

 

"But it's powerful. We're on a mission to do something about the awfulness of modern business language and, for those that really get it, we take them across a line that they can never step back over again.

 

"They may be tempted at times when the going gets tough, but something happens here that would make it difficult for them to ever go back and write all that drivel again." I wonder. It may take a particularly evolved employer to invest in the Dark Angels treatment - but it's an even more enlightened one that welcomes the newly-sensitised writer back. And me? I think perhaps it went in under the radar.

Copyright Scotland on Sunday 2008