First, I have to say sometimes it's harder to think of pithy blog-post titles than it is to come up with the blog post itself.

With that said, I shall continue. Come Monday, I'll be a student again, kind of. I signed up for an online course through Stanford Continuing Education. The title of the course is "The Essential Art: Making Movies in Your Reader's Mind." It's being taught by Seth Harwood, who wrote Jack Wakes Up. It was a book I enjoyed and having met Seth online and then at Bouchercon 2009 I decided his class was the one I wanted to take; I'd been toying with the idea of taking an online writing course for awhile and this just seemed to be the right time.

I have two goals for the class. The first, of course, is to enhance Diary of Bedlam with the writing techniques I hope to learn. The second is to write a short story which I plan to submit to the MWA anthology. I've never written a short story and it will be good to have Seth and my classmates as a sounding board in this endeavor. I've already got an idea for that story but as always, I'm worried about the writing of it–I wonder if there will ever come a time when I feel confident in my ability to write a given story?

What about you? Are you embarking on any new adventures in 2010? A new job or a class? Do tell!

4 Replies to “I’ve Got Class”

  1. Antoinette says: January 22, 2010 at 7:42 am

    I bet you’ll get a lot out of taking this class. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did my Autism Certification program through UCD Extension last year. Good luck and keep us posted!

  2. Seth Harwood says: January 8, 2010 at 10:27 pm

    Holly,
    As Rodney Dangerfield once said so aptly, “Why don’t you call me sometime, when you have no class?”
    Good. Good, right? Ha. Heh.
    Anyway, yeah, working on the story is a great idea! We’ll be covering a lot of topics that’ll help you see revision work on Diary of Bedlam (hope not TOO much) but we’re starting with exercises that should help the story get off the ground.
    Joe, I thought I already told you the class has a no-zombies rule. Sorry.
    Cheers,
    Seth

  3. Holly says: January 8, 2010 at 8:54 am

    Hi Joe!
    This is an expensive class and I really hesitated before I joined. Seth will be teaching other classes in the future–I’ll let you know how this one is and you can perhaps do another one.

  4. ZombieJoe says: January 8, 2010 at 8:50 am

    My trip to RT in Columbus may have been derailed. Not looking good for the class either. (Hard to resist the instructor telling you there is room in the class and I should join in.) We shall see.
    Looks like I need to win the lottery or something.

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