First Writing Class

It’s time to get some instruction! It’s not that I haven’t had any. I did go through school and I did some creative writing for a number of years before stopping altogether for thirty years. When I started writing again, I was creaky and rusted and made every error imaginable but it really was like riding a bicycle. The first results weren’t great, but I was able to put together something that resembled a story upon my glorious return.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve been honing my skills the only way that made sense to me at the time; write anything and everything. Write a lot, experiment, see what happens. This approach got me writing and improving but I could still feel there were a lot of holes to be filled in my knowledge. So, I had a couple of manuscripts developed by Aaron Redfern and Danielle Dyal and these critiques gave me a huge boost in understanding where I needed to improve. On the whole I’m very happy with the results up until now but something was missing.

The most obvious answer is that technical skills are missing from my writing as I rely on “gut instincts” to produce stories. And this is true, but I think what is also missing is face-to-face instruction and comparison with other writers. Writing in a vacuum has its advantages but at this point I think it has more disadvantages than advantages and it was time to change that. So, I signed up for my first ever writing class with only seven students. This class is in person, which is what I really need in order to share experiences with other writers.

More to come!