Courses – Stephanie Hurt

It’s Monday people! Why is Monday such a horrible day most weeks? Shouldn’t we be rested up from the weekend? I don’t know about you, but Monday’s always seem to pull at me. For some reason Monday’s make me tired, and I have four more work days to go!

Well, on to the reason for today’s post. Have you taken a writer’s course lately? Over the weekend I took a writer’s course and I have to say it was quite enjoyable. I learned more than I expected and it wasn’t even boring. Sometimes we try to go in the other direction when it’s time to learn something new, but guess what, it’s time to try new things. The course was a series of videos that taught about writing, of course!

My suggestion to you is this, go for it! If you’re bored out of your mind and don’t seem to be learning anything, then move on, but if you start listening intently and learn something, then your time hasn’t been wasted. If I get permission to let you in on the free course that I took, I’ll definitely post the link here. Let’s just say I plan on using what I learned and hopefully if anything, I can pass on the results here.

So, get on with your Monday, and remember at least you made it to Monday!

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Good Monday morning! It’s drizzling rain here in Georgia, but that’s alright, we need it. Also since it’s Monday it kind of meets with my mood.

Today I want to talk about how you train as a writer. Some people say, ‘it’s easy to write, anyone can do it’, but that’s not the case. Writing takes more than you think to get from start to finish. You can sit down and write an idea for what you want, but it takes more than just an idea to get the full story. I’ve had ideas before and thought they’d be good, but they didn’t have enough filler to actually make a book.

I like to study what my favorite authors do. You may be asking what I mean, well it’s quite simple. I read lots of books in the genre I write. As I read, I’m looking at the sentence structure, paragraph lengths, the setup of the characterizations and the way the book is brought to the end. It’s amazing what you can learn from doing something you love, reading.

Then of course I read posts from other authors, writing magazines and even study courses. So, do you still think it’s all that easy? I’ve learned more English in the last three years that I’ve been publishing, not just writing. English skills are very important when you’re writing. Hey, I was thinking backwards for a while, but once you get into the business you realize, it’s more than just words on paper.

Several authors I follow have businesses that help other authors. All authors should want to help each other. It’s amazing the things you can learn from other authors about their own mistakes and how to correct them. I also join many Facebook writing groups, which just by reading them daily I can learn so much. Try it, you won’t regret it.

So, do you learn from other authors? If you’re struggling with something in your writing, there’s always someone out there or an article that can help you out.

As always, good writing and May God Bless you….