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Friday, 17 February, 2012

Click here for this week's essay.

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John Paxton Sheriff (Crime Novels and Short Stories and Novel Writing) has written a great essay on the value of writing courses. That's just below this. We're rather prejudiced, of course. He also made your school director feel...tired. Sheriff wrote four books last year and reprinted six.

I wish to comment on something Sheriff writes in his essay. "Did I ever take a writing course? Indeed I did, but so long ago that I can't remember its name...." Well, I still remember the first writing course I ever took, at some local college. First day, the teacher told us to bring some of our work to the next class to read to the class and have critiqued. I almost wet my pants. First off, I didn't have anything already written. but even if I had, there was no way I was going to let others read it and critique it. "Critique" I assumed, translated to tear my work to shreds while also destroying my ego. Bring Kleenex.

I never went back. I was too ashamed to or too scared to. Maybe both. And I keep that in mind as I run this online school. Writing can be scary, but here you have a home and people who know what it's like, people who will help you without trying to inflate their importance by belittling yours.

Sandra Miller Louden teaches Greeting Card Writing for WritersCollege.com. Louden was interviewed for the Yahoo Sports The Post Game on "Let's Make Super Monday A National Holiday"

"It could totally work as a holiday," says Sandra Miller-Louden, a freelance greeting card writer and coach. "After Christmas and New Year's, what's the next big thing that everyone participates in? Valentine's Day? St. Patrick's Day parades? Easter? The next big bash is Fourth of July. It's a viable occasion."

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ESSAY: Writing Classes, Good or Bad?
by John Paxton Sheriff

All aspiring fiction writers have this itch inside them to get their brilliant, original ideas down on paper, but when they sit down at a desk and are confronted by a blank sheet or screen - suddenly many are at a loss for words. They know they want to write, but they don't know what to say.

That doesn't apply to everyone, of course. Stephen King, for example, could probably write a few thousand words over the breakfast table (between the cereal and the toast), and this would be long before his first book was published. But if you are one of those who simply hasn't a clue where to begin, then help is at hand.

Writing courses are often maligned. Nobody, critics say, can be taught to write fiction. I don't agree with that (though I do believe an aspiring writer must have some facility with words), and where a writing course undoubtedly helps is in getting the novice writer started. If fiction writing is shrouded in mystery, then a good writing course is the Sherlock Holmes of the literary world.

...(more)

Click Here to read the full essay.