Night School. Will it be pennies well spent?

[embsidney20]

Ok. Hello!
I am 22 years old and am stuck in a job as a chef. I enjoy the work and the people I work with but am not passionate about working with food. (Only eating it)
I have always been a natural at creative writing, apparently! At 13 I made my english teacher cry in front of the class whilst I was reading out a short story I made as homework. All about wild horses fighting to the death, who could also talk. Says alot about my childhood huh.
She even called my mum to tell her how moving it was. Shame I hated the teacher with a passion but it was pretty satisfying to see her weep!
I havent written anything creative wise since then but do write alot better than I speak, hopefully that means something is still there to work with.
Sorry to ramble on. The point is, these courses cost money and I want to know if they are really worth the time. I have plenty of ideas but need tutoring in how to create suspense, twists, turns and plotting in general. If all was to go well I was going to branch off into tutoring in Myths & Legends and Crime writing.
I have made a teeny tiny step by going to the worlds top Witchcraft museum and taking plenty of notes regarding all things supernatural.
My interests definately lie there. The normal world is just way too boring & predictable.

Hope people can advise and possibly share their experience in a similar sit.

Cheers!

[Dom]

Well...the answer you get will probably depend on who you ask.  Jim Butcher has mentioned that the first Harry Dresden book was written as an attempt to rebel against what his teachers were telling him.  And, well...you know what happened.  So there are authors out there who did get something out of classes.  There are also authors out there who have degrees in English or Creative Writing.

Me, I think the money would be wasted unless you're the type that NEEDS another human to teach you.  There are many resources on the web that will help you learn how to write, and of course you can study on your own.  For example, I know Patricia Wrede has recently been blogging on writing topics.  If you hit up a bunch of author blogs you'll find a lot of stuff from various viewpoints.  Orson Scott Card also wrote a book on writing, although it was a long time ago and might be out of print.  And, the discipline that you'd need to teach yourself is the same you would use to keep yourself on task and writing without an external force like a school or class or teacher hounding you.  Also, I don't think you can get your 1,000,000 words of crap in purely through a class.  A lot of learning is doing, experimenting.

Do you currently write at all?  Or are you just considering picking it up based on your old high school days?  I would say if you are not, right now, writing...start writing.  You don't need a class to do it.  Then once you've had some new experience, that isn't idea generation or "research" (procrastinating in the name of "research" is an easy trap to fall into--we all do it, particularly in the SF&F genre), re-evaluate if you still want to spend money on the class.  Maybe you'll find you don't actually enjoy the writing part of it, and have no motivation to work at it.  Or maybe you'll find you love it, you're learning a lot on your own, and you have some good questions to ask the teacher if you take a class.

[The Deposed King]

I would start out with playing some paper and pencil D&D.  As soon as you can go the Game Master route.  Start out with the modules and then graduate to off the cuff encapsuled stories.  If you can keep 3-5 players focused and engaged in a story, even when the are bound and determined to go in the opposite direction from your planned adventure, causing you to think up cool and exciting ideas on the fly, you can create any story you want.

The other thing you could do is just plain write.  Every published author who will talk about it says the first stuff they wrote was complete dog crud.  However they were dogged and relentless and refused to stop even when the stench wafting off their own pages wanted to make them barf.  After a book or three of writing the stink bomb they gained the skills they needed to make it.  Its the old, you suck at your new job, (whatever it is) but after enough repetition and a refusal to quite pretty soon you're seasoned and after a while giving pointers to the 'new guys'.

This place won't let you do it.  But I started out cutting my writing teeth over at baen's bar in the slush pile part of their forum.  Write a few chapters and then a few more and when you're ready for some feedback.  (assuming you don't have anyone else lined up to read your stuff) and they'll give you some pointers and feed back.  You can also read some of what other people are writing over there.  So that you can shop and compare their stuff to your own.

The best and worst advice you can get is that if you want to write you just have to write.  Its the worst because it leave you feeling like, dang, that's why I'm here in the first place for help!  The best because if you do just write write write no matter how bad or how boring or how aweful your stuff is, at the end of it you will be head and shoulders better than where you are.  Its the ones who refuse to take no for an answer, who keep on making those cold calls no matter how tough the rejections are, and the ones who are just too plain stupid to realize they'll 'never get there' that are the ones who make it to the finish line.



The Deposed King

[embsidney20]

Woo hoo! Thanks for the tips, the course ive been looking at starts next year so I'll definately spend my time playing with my ideas for now, and maybe i'll unlock something in my tiny head that actually does me some huge favours! Thanks again

[Wordmaker]

I think it depends on what you feel you need, and what you want. Creative writing courses can be good, but there's a lot of information you can get for free from a wide range of writing blogs. I'd be happy to share some links to bloggers I know, many of whom are successful authors.

The biggest benefit of writing courses, I believe, is that you can gain confidence in your writing and get feedback from a lot of different people.

At the end of the day, the most important thing about becoming a writer is to write. So whatever it is that helps you keep writing, go for it.

[embsidney20]

Right, a major thanks to every reply i've had on my first ever forum post!!
Making baguettes at work today and suddenly threw everything on the counter due to a massive brain wave!! Randomly thought of what I beleive is gonna be a great story for ATLEAST a triology of books Vaguely discussed it with my mum, not giving too much away and she's pretty excited for me.
So i'm going to take all of your advice in hand and will try and start this out on my larry.
Fingers crossed that I wont punch my laptop in frustration as alot of research in going to be needed to give my characters a believable structure, but ive jotted down enough for a decent plot.
So thanks to you guys for suggesting I try this with just me, myself and brain. Its definately broke of from what I expected to write about but still involves the weird and wonderful.

And yes please to those blog links!

[Wordmaker]

I'll post them here over the weekend. I may not get a chance for a couple of days, as my daughters are having their christening tomorrow.

Good luck with your new idea!

[gatordave96]

I guess it depends on whether you think you need some sort of structure to learning the craft of writing.  Personally, I've never taken a course in creative writing.  But I've taken time to read about the subject.  For example, I found Stephen King's "On Writing" to be a big help.  And I write a lot in my occupation, just not the type of writing that leads to a novel.

So, my only recommendation is to think about what you want to get out of the course.  Are you somebody that needs additional practice writing?  Do you have folks around that can help guide you and give feedback?  Do you have the will to do it on your own, or will it help to be in a more formal setting? 

Best of luck.

[OZ]

There is a thread on this forum about resources that can be found online. It can be found here: http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,15083.0.html

There's a lot of good stuff out there.

[Anei]

I really enjoyed the creative writing class I took. I'm working on an English degree, so it's a pretty natural choice, but I'd always wanted to take a class like that and had always been too much of a wuss to do it. I'm not going to say I learned a great deal - if you're interested in writing, a lot of the stuff you learn seems like common sense, although it did help me re-distribute some of the emphasis that I placed on specific aspects of the writing process. For me, it was reassurance that my writing, and therefore I, wasn't a terrible waste of paper, and reassurance that there really is a world in which I can share something important with other people, perfect strangers, and they won't laugh in my face.

[Wordmaker]

I think that's the most important thing about writers' groups and classes. Building the confidence in yourself to commit to writing a book and getting it published. Too many great writers pack it in before they've given it a fair shot, and the only reason to quit before you've truly tested yourself is a lack of confidence.

[Anei]

Yeah, when I was thinking about this discussion this morning, it occurred to me that a good writing group can accomplish the same exact thing without having to spend quite as much money (if my local community college is any indicator, and it's one of the largest in the US, you could easily spend $500 for one class only, while some local writing groups have dues around $75-90/year). Having some threat of a drop in my GPA helped me take it more seriously than I think I might have been able to on my own. I don't construe that as a lack of commitment or interest, more that I've got a lifetime of sidelining writing to get over. Also, not gonna lie, doing well in that class kind of felt like having an official stamp of approval from a professional, even though I know that logically, creative writing is very subjective and it would probably take a whole lot of doing nothing at all to do poorly in a class like that. Lots of writing groups have published authors in regular attendance, and people who are just as well-educated as someone at a local college.