Looking
for writing classes?
Want to write for publication or for personal growth?
Want to sharpen those professional skills?
WritersCollege.com is
the place!
Let
me see...e-mail hosting companies that go offline for hours
and don't bother to tell anyone? Editors who impose deadlines
and then don't bother to open the packages delivered to their
desks? Professional writers who get mad at new writers for
accepting the low-pay jobs—as if turning down the
work would
make the world a better place? No, let's not. That's just the
nature of things and I once read that you can gauge a man's
importance by what it takes to make him angry.
(Nonsense,
by the way. I have a friend who seems to live in perpetual
Salvation Army poverty who is unfazed by
anything the world throws at him. I once interviewed Dick Cheney—he
was Secretary of Defense at the time, not the Vice President—and
he got angry about almost everything I asked him.)
No, let's
focus on our writing and where we stand at this halfway point
through the year. In January of each year I always have something
to say about planning. But, as they say, life is what happens
while you are making plans. I know that I have not done as
well as I might have in following my plan for this year. In
some ways this is good, as I have clients I didn't expect.
In some ways this is bad as I have not done much work on my
fiction, as I had wanted to do.
How
about you? Do you have a plan? Do you have a schedule—which
is not the same thing as a plan. There are writers, successful
writers of great renown, who write in impassioned bursts separated
by weeks of doing something else. I have read of authors who,
once yearly, rent a hotel room, often in a distant city, for
several weeks and get room service and never leave the room
and sit there undistracted by family or friends, and bang
out another novel.
I
find that spending a few hours each day, at a specific, regular
time
and place,
is better.
Make it a habit, so to speak. In my case it's more than a
few hours, it's 8 a.m. to noon., then two hours off, then
2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Ten hours, four days a week. If I have
been a good boy Monday and Tuesday, I get Wednesday off. If
I have been a good boy Thursday and Friday, I get Saturday
off. Small rewards for small deadlines. Works for me but I
don't expect something like that to work for you, but do you
have some system?
I'm
going to go over to our
message board right now and post a
starter message on the subject. Please stop by there and tell
me what plans, schedules, systems you use to generate the words.
Everyone has a slightly different way of going about it.
And,a
s soon as I do that, I'm going sailing. I was a good boy the
past few days. Though, in Florida in July, going outdoors for
any length of time might be classified as punishment, not a
reward.
FEATURED
COURSES (visit our Course Catalog to see ALL of the courses):
An
introductory course for mature students who want to explore
their writing potential. We will fuel the fire already
smoldering within your own life experiences.
Something
not working in your fiction or nonfiction? Here's your
chance to examine the seven most common problems that keep
a manuscript from being publishable.
Short
fiction is unlike longer fiction in more ways than length.
This course will help you understand the basic structure
of the short story, how to develop your own style when
writing one, and the importance and process of revision.
Adding
speechwriting skills to your writer's toolkit can make
you more marketable. Public relations firms, businesses,
local government officials, nonprofit organizations, etc.,
need people with this skill.
Also
available as an Extended course option
SCHOOL
NEWS: Nothing of much interest. Just paid out a
gob of money for more advertising. But what do you care?
By the way, if you know of a place where we need to be getting
the word out about the school, let me know.
WHO's
DOING WHAT:Sandra Miller-Louden,
our instructor for writing
greeting cards, book reviews and
quizzes spoke
at the Mercer County Writer's Conference in Stoneboro PA
on April 27th. Her topic was Quizzes That
Sizzle--one
of the courses she teaches here at WritersCollege.com.
In
addition, Sandra has recently been interviewed in the following:
Mslexia:
For Women Who Write (published in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne,
England), Metro (an international newspaper with 71 editions
for over 100 cities in 21 countries, published in 19 languages
across Europe, North & South America and Asia, and
The Herald-Journal in Spartanburg, South Carolina. These
interviews all had to do with greeting card writing,
another course Sandra has taught online for almost a decade.
Sandra's
work also appeared in the May 2007 edition of ByLine in the "In Addition" Department. Her personal essay
on "The Biggest of Libraries...The Smallest of Libraries" touches
on the difference between going from city life with the
ninth largest library in Pennsylvania to country living
and a library
that shares its space with the local post office and is
open one hour a day.
School
director Stephen Morrill completed, with co-author Adele Woodyard,
a rewrite of Fun with the Family: Florida, a travel
guide published by Globe-Pequot Press. Steve also completed
an article
about architect Mark Hampton for Florida Architecture magazine.
Steve teaches courses in the freelance writing business, magazine
articles, magazine query letters, research and interviewing,
and photography for writers.
