Just Another Dreamer?

Sadly, I’m the sort of numpty who can believe she’s been told by God to be a writer and then get distracted by any number of meaningful and/or pointless activities and still not get on with it, or at least not whole-heartedly!

But things have suddenly changed in the last few weeks.

Taking a 10 week online course with Oxford University on “Writing Fiction for Young Adults” has been one of two significant turning points.  Although the book I’ve had in mind to write for many years is a children’s one (more on that another time), I realised earlier this year that Young Adult (YA) fiction is what I’m really passionate about and what I would always read myself by choice.

It’s hard to vocalise adequately all that I got out of the course!  There was a lot of theoretical information and useful links that I’ll keep accessing (and blogs I’ll keep following).  There were multiple opportunities to do creative writing exercises and post them to the forums for feedback from course mates and the excellent tutor.  His feedback was particularly insightful and specific, and allegedly (like Mr Walton, my GCSE tutor, before him) believes that I might be “a very capable writer”.

Of course, he’s a nice guy who wants to encourage potential writers.  He’s also paid to be encouraging.  But it would be good to find out if he’s right.

So, I’ve gained a much clearer understanding about YA fiction and the process of writing in general, as well as some practical skills to help me do it better.  But greater than all the things you can appraise in an end-of-course evaluation form, I came away from those 10 weeks inspired and fired up about having a proper go at writing.

And that could make all the difference right now…