Week 1 of my creative writing course

Posted by Annemarie Luck on Aug 15, 2011 in in this month's issue, plugged in | 0 comments

‘You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.’ – Jack London.

This is just one of the motivating snippets to come out of module 1 of the Random House Struik/GetSmarter creative writing course, which started last week. If you read my blog post about the course last month (or if you’ve read our August issue), you’ll know that I’ve embarked on this 10-week on-line course to kickstart Marie Claire‘s Follow Your Dream initiative, and to help me resurrect the seed of a novel I began 10 years ago. I’ll be blogging about my progress every Monday and also giving you feedback on the course, in case it happens to be something you’re also thinking of doing.

So far, so good. Writer’s block officially overcome and inspiration officially flowing (a couple of chapters down, about 78 000 words to go!). As for the practical side, the course convener – respected literary agent, author and lecturer Ron Irwin – is often on line, giving feedback and commentary, and the GetSmarter website is set up so that it’s like a social networking site (you create your own profile and can interact with other learners).

For more information on the course, go to http://www.getsmarter.co.za/creative-writing or buy our August issue, on sale until Thursday. To be continued next week…