Right Write!

14/01/2007 11:35 AM

I received a call from the college, on the Thursday prior to my first class which was to begin on Tuesday January 9th. They had decided that three people did not warrant running Writing the Short Story.

My disappointment was evident and the person on the other end of the line quickly suggested another class that I might find interesting. The alternative, titled Creative Writing had eight people enrolled and would be run if a few more signed up. Without reading the description, I instructed her to transfer my enrolment to the other class.

My new writing class is on Thursday evenings. After hanging up the phone, I pulled out the college calendar to read the description:

Explore the technique, style and craft of major writing categories, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry. This introduction to the many genres of creative writing emphasizes personal creativity. Learn how to approach editors and market a manuscript. Take this opportunity to develop ideas and receive feedback from the instructor and other members of the class.

The description of Writing the Short Story is as follows:

Enter the gateway of great fiction through its most challenging form, the short story. Establish your writer’s voice and learn the discipline of developing plot, character, dialogue, scene construction and theme in under 5,000 words. Understand the Canadian market for short stories and how to leverage your short story craftsmanship for other literary forms.

I decided that this twist of fate might work out for the better. Instead of working on one type of writing, I will be opening myself up to other options that perhaps I had never considered.

Still I had a hard time on Thursday keeping my eyes open because of another restless sleep night (possibly from snoring) and I fleetingly considered missing the class. When my alarm had gone off in the morning, I had just fallen back into a deep sleep and I struggled to get dressed and make my way to work.

During the morning at work, I tried to re-energize myself by closing my eyes and leaning back in my chair during an hour-long telephone conference call. My boss kept calling out for me to wake up. I growled that if he hears snoring, then he can be worried, otherwise, I am awake.

I was at the west office that day, so it made no sense to go home first, as the class was a short 20 min drive from there. Well let me re-phrase that, it should have been a short 20 min drive. I forgot that it was a dark night and that I had not been to that campus in more than two years, so my idea of how far along the road it was, ended up being a little skewed.

After a few wrong rights and subsequent u-turns, I did finally find myself in the parking lot of the campus and with help from the volunteers, entered class 225.

My first impression of my new teacher was positive. She is an attractive woman (possibly close to my age) with a British accent! I was thrilled because I am in love with British accents and could listen to it for hours without ever becoming bored. I do not even care what is being said. It makes no difference, the only thing that matters is how it sounds and to my ear, that is wonderful.

My body snapped out of its sleepy state and my mind was suddenly alert. Her name is Rachael Preston. She hails from Yorkshire. I have subsequently learned from Google this morning that she moved to Canada when she was 16 and she has lived in many parts of the world as well as a couple of different provinces in Canada.

She has published two novels and is currently working on a third. The class opened with Rachael handing out five pages of course description and then telling us to turn to page three because she never reads the first two. On page three was the evaluation section for the course and Rachael gave us her version of the evaluation. It was quite different from the college description.

It turns out that we are in a “fiction writing” course. Other than the first assignment, we will not be writing non-fiction and from the sounds of things, I doubt that we will have to write any poetry. I am over the top with enthusiasm. I cannot wait until Thursday to go back.

Besides having a wonderful teacher, the class is relatively small with two older gentlemen, another woman around my age and six kids in their early twenties (or so they look). There was one person missing.

The woman that was around my age sat next to me and she is a hoot! I think I may have made a new friend.

Our introductory exercise was to answer several different questions: What do you do (for a living)? What do you like to read? Why do you write? What do you expect to get out of the course?

My answer to what do I like to read was Historical Fiction and I explained that I particularly enjoy sagas where the characters affect each other’s lives.

Near the end of the class, my teacher looked at me, winked and stated, by the way, I write Historical Fiction.