Post-Writing Fundamentals

The course ended weeks ago and I’m still buzzing from the inspiration it’s given me. The Writers & Artists’ Writing Fundamentals course are hands-down the best value for money I’ve ever had in a writing course, and Bill Ryan, the course leader, was fantastic in his feedback. The first thing I did when I finished the course was to put my novel in a drawer for a month and forget about it. I’d spent ten weeks engrossed in it, thinking through the characters and tearing chunks out of the various scenes. What surprised me most about the course was that reading and critiquing other writer’s works was a lot more useful than I expected it to be. Before this course I used to think that this exercise was just a lazy way of keeping students busy, but what I hadn’t realised was that by seeing the mistakes other people made, and listening to the feedback they gave me, I was starting to see a pattern to bad writing, and common mistakes. When you get your friends to read your novel, they’ll just tell you it’s nice. But when someone who doesn’t care about your feelings reads it, you get the feedback straight into the vein, and it’s a refreshing cold shower that jolts the system. Another thing that occurred to me before I made my weekly submissions was that I was expecting other people’s time to read what I’d written, and by being sloppy I was therefore disrespecting this somehow. All in all, the ideas I’ve had bubbling in my head over the past month on how to make my writing better in general, and Damaskopolis specifically, can’t stay in there much longer. It’s time to rewrite this thing into what it was always supposed to be.

Laptops charged!
Playlists loaded!

All systems are go…

Writing Fundamentals - First Class

I’ve taken another plunge and signed up for back to back writing courses with Writers & Artists. The process of writing is nothing like I’d expected it to be when I first started about eight years ago. From staring at a blank screen as I waited for ‘inspiration’ to hit me, to here, there have been a lot of mistakes, obstacles, and lessons learned. But I feel like I need some more. It’s been incredibly hard to find people to give feedback on my existing novel, and whilst I am grateful for those few who took the time to do this (even with rewrites!), I’m still struggling with tightening down the plot.

The way I see it, paying for these two courses gives me a captive audience of other writers, and as a bonus, I get to see how other people write their novels. Tonight’s the night, and my novel is first in the workshop to be run through the gauntlet. It’s going to be tough seeing Damaskopolis ripped to shreds, but worth the honest and fair critique that will make it the fun and gripping novel I want it to be.

I could have abandoned it and started any number of other story ideas in my head, but I figured this will be my flagship. I’ll make my mistakes and learning with it, I’ll polish it until it’s gleaming, and when the time comes, I’ll publish it as an e-book if I have to. But at least it’ll be something someone enjoys reading and turning from page to page. If I can accomplish that. If this ends up being the one book to my name, then it’ll be a cracker of a story for a reader, and I’ll be glad.