Going Back to School

I did something these past couple of months that I hadn't done in a long time.  I took a class.  It was an online class in creative writing.  This has been a year of growth and discovery in my writing, and when this class became available I thought I'd give it a try.  The teacher is Dr. Jonathan Rogers, and the class is called "Writing Close to the Earth."  I found out about this class through the connections I made at the Hutchmoot conference I attended last fall. (I'm going to Hutchmoot again next week, and I can hardly wait!)

Here are a few of the things I learned from Dr. Rogers:

1.  The class was called "Writing Close to the Earth" because Dr. Rogers wanted us to really explain with all our senses what we were experiencing.   He wanted us to take our readers into the moment and let them see what we see, hear what we hear, feel what we feel.  It has really helped me be more aware of being in the moment and think about how to describe what I am experiencing.

2.  On each assignment I got pretty much the same feedback (I know, I'm a slow learner).  I always explained too much, told too much of the backstory to what was going on.  I am learning to let the actions of the moment speak for themselves.

3.  Although some people might be challenged to create a 500 word story, I often found it difficult to confine myself to that number.  Dr. Rogers told me that was the point-- to make me have to really think about what to include and what to leave out.

4.  Every week there were reading assignments related to the prompt we were to write about for that week.  For the most part, they were wonderful things to read.  I especially liked the pieces of Dr. Rogers' own writing that he shared with us.  They were very well done.

5.  It's hard to recover from making a bad response to a prompt.  I feel like I wasted one whole assignment making a terrible choice about what to write about.

6.  The feedback I got from Dr. Rogers on every assignment was so helpful.  I guess this is what it must be like to have an editor.  Phil said this must be what it feels like to go to a great school and have top-notch teachers.  Most of the time when I have someone read a piece I wrote the response is "That's really good," or "I like this."  It was very helpful to have real criticism designed to bring out the best in the story I'm trying to tell.

I enjoyed this class very much, and I will post a couple of the stories I wrote here in the next few days.