The Craft of Writing

Foreword

I've been writing, studying writing, and teaching writing for more than twenty years. Through it all, I've learned that you can never know it all. Writing has been a passion for most of my life and I'm still learning. I post this information here with the hope that you share my love of learning and writing and are willing to take this journey with me.

As I write this, I am poised to teach grade 12 Writer's Craft. I've taught it a handful of times before, but none since I've become an editor, publisher, and published author. My goal is to frame the course as a way to empower my students to hone their writing skills and learn that they can easily self- publish with a lot of determination and at little to no cost.

We begin our journey with how to build your author platform. I haven't sent a query to an agent or applied for a job yet where my online presence hasn't first been vetted. Blogging is the new journalism, as far as I'm concerned, and my students will begin by creating blogs and posting to them throughout the semester.

Next, we study how other authors write. In the unit  I call "Read Like a Writer", students will learn to deconstruct the fiction they read to study the choices professional authors make as they write.

From there, we will explore the various components of fiction: showing, not telling; story structure; character sketches; setting; dialogue, etc.

Lastly, "How to Publish", in which we look at all of the other aspects of publishing, from editing to formatting to covers to publishing, as well as reviewing (another type of non-fiction).

As we take our journey, I'm open to answering questions. While I may not have all the answers, I might be able to nudge you in the right direction, if I am able. 

I hope you have as much fun working through the posts as I have putting them together.

All the best!