Learning to Write

I was never sure what they taught us in English lessons.  They certainly never told me any of it.  In English Literature, we advanced to the point where the top group were discussing for a week points that I could get down in half an hour.  English Language was no better.  I don’t think that I ever wrote more than three pages total in those lessons, and no teacher seemed to care enough to help me.  It all seemed so strange, as though I were trying to learn a foreign language, rather than the rules of my own.

It was only when I left school completely and started a writing course that it started to make sense.  I started the course because my sister recommended it, and instantly found it very helpful.  I had been trying to flesh a story out into a novel for two years, and the course really helped with that.  The information in the booklets and modules of the course, as well as correction from my first tutor really helped me.  looking back on an original copy of the story five years later, my incedibly poor use f language there frequently made me laugh.  I have now become quite pedantic about correct use of language, though I am never too hard on people – as I remember how hard I once found it.

The writing course was with The Writer’s Bureau, and I found my first tutor incredibly helpful and reassuring.  He appreciated that a lot of people are under-cofident with their writing at first, and so always mentioned the thigns that had to be put a certain way more strongly – and always put it nicely.  If it hadn’t been for him, I would have completely given up on writing.

I almost did when I was given a second tutor, in fact.  She was bitchy in such a way that I initially thought that it was me with a problem.  In eventually told the course people that I had a problem with her, and they are going to assign me a new tutor when I continue the course.  I don’t know when that will be, but I shall finish.  But right now, I have too much to worry about as it is.

I am glad that I started the course, and I have finished lots of writing because of it.  I even found a novel way to get my book self-published, and am sure that the people who promised to buy it will eventually.  Take a look for yourself http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-power-of-seven/3472624