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Last updated on
8 September, 2007

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Writing for Fun and Profit
with Alyce M. Skelton

REGISTRATION:

COST, LENGTH, PREREQUISITES:

No prerequisites.

Standard course: $150 / 6 weeks. Click here to register.

For questions about this COURSE, e-mail Alyce M. Skelton at

A six week introductory class for "prepublished" writers. Students will focus on a variety of writing techniques, journaling processes, writing, editing and marketing strategies and will apply them to either a work in progress, or will develop a new project. The class, geared to the goals and needs of each participant, will explore a diversity of new approaches to accomplish those goals.

The first three classes will focus on your writing, specifically, so I may evaluate where you are in the process. The next three classes will focus on how to market what you write.

As the class progresses, other issues may come up, materials will be emailed to you.

Week 1:
1. Introductions and goals...
2. Freewriting, steppingstones, clustering
3. "I ams" and the internal critic
4. My goals=your goals...
5. View on critiquing and class work
6. Confidentiality and use of logs
7. Reading lists: Goldberg, Progoff, Peter Elbow, find them!!
8. Weekly freewrite exercise.... word salad
9. My goals and evaluations of the students...

Week 2:
1. Daily Steppingstone results
2. Evaluating your work....and helping each other
3. Editors as final critics
4 Weekly freewrite exercises
5. Responses to freewriting.
6. Working with the Internal Critic

Week 3:
1. Research, where to find it.
2. Interviewing sources
3. Polishing -- grammar, spelling, and other stuff
4. Where to get help for grammar phobias!
5. Other online classes and online resources

Week 4:
1. Beginning marketing strategies
2. Local Markets vs. National Markets
3. Interviews, Op Ed pieces, essays
4. Business writing and publications
5. What about the airways?
6. Interviewing strategies

Week 5:
1. Protecting your work...
2. What about copyrights?
3. Internet and online publishers vs. writers
4. Publishing, Online or Off
5. Writer's groups, unions and organizations
6. Online markets, pro and con.

Week 6:
1. Agents-When are you ready to look for an agent?
2. Where to look?
3. Evaluating agents? Paying an agent?
4. Where do you go from here?
5. Future goals, evaluations - Six month plans.
6. Next year's goals.

Alyce M. Skelton has taught her popular Writing for Fun & Profit © and Writing Through Loss© classes since August 1995 off line and on. Skelton has been teaching writing classes for 17 years prior to becoming an online instructor. Before moving back to the frozen north (NY State) in 2001, Skelton, a freelance writer, President of Writer's Link Communications, had lived for eleven years in Wilmington, NC.

Founder of NC's Cape Fear Writer's and Artists, Skelton had freelanced for Reel Carolina, a movie publication promoting Screen Gems Studio's filming in Wilmington. Prior to moving south, she had been a staff writer for the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce, and had also written for various publications in Massachusetts.

She is interested in fostering new writing talent and loves to teach writing to people of all ages. In all of her classes she uses teaching techniques that enable people to access their creativity. She has taught related art and writing classes in a variety of locations in Massachusetts, North Carolina, and New York. Some programs include classes taught through Special Programs at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington from 1991-94, St. John's Museum of Art, Wilmington, as well as classes for the Children's Academy operated by the University.

Her business, Writer's Link, provides writing classes, and copywriting and editing services. Wearing her "Writer's Link" hat, she writes brochures, publicity, scripts and other materials for businesses and individuals, but also conducts eclectic workshops on writing and the visual arts, and edits manuscripts for would be novelists.