Here’s a writing course sample – will you open the box?

FLASH: Since posting this, I have learned that the NaNoWriMo courses for 2017 are now closed. Here's the current link, for those who want to see what's publically available. Or mark your calendars for 2018.

I just started another of the online writing courses NaNoWriMo sponsors with Coursera and Wesleyan College. This is my third of the four courses NaNoWriMo wrangled for people interested in participating in its annual November write-a-thon. Instructors so far have been Salvatore Scibona (The End), Amity Gage (O My Darling), and now Amy Bloom (Lucky Us). The classes are billed as lasting four weeks, but I clipped through the first ones at about two weeks each, starting in late August.

image: pixabay

As I’ve mentioned before, you can listen to the lectures and interviews, do the readings and writing assignments free of charge. However, you will need to pay the special $29 fee per class to get (and give) reviews and feedback from your fellow cyber classmates.

Even though one of my peer reviewers was kind enough to tell me that I failed the first assignment in Scibona’s course on The Craft of Style, enough of my fellow classmates gave me a pass to let me slither through the course’s pass/fail grading system.

The assignment was to write three paragraphs of description using language of the physical senses – sight, sound, touch/feel, smell and taste. He didn’t say we had to cram all five senses into those three paragraphs, and I only managed three. Here’s my effort.

***

The Box

I head for the garage to go through that box Matt and I kept in case there were more kids, even after we knew how unlikely that would be. When I flip on the overhead light, a small scorpion scuttles backward, claws clicking, tail raised menacingly. I’ll have to warn the kids about it. Or maybe I shouldn’t say anything. Their boys’ curiosity is as likely to send them in search of the deadly little creature as to scare them away from it.

The box I want hasn’t been opened, although two years have passed since our move here to Las Vegas. The tape sealing its seams is brown and peeling. Written on its dusty side is its room designation: nursery. I bend carefully at the knees to lift the box, conscious of the importance of legs, of knees, of the flex and stretch of muscles, of feet planted firmly on the ground. Things you don’t miss until they’re gone.

Then out to the patio. There are wet marks on the box when I set it on the picnic table. Sweat? You don’t sweat in the dry desert heat of Las Vegas. Sweat wicks off exposed skin before you even have a chance to feel it. But the marks must be sweat. They can’t be tears. Surely, I don’t have any tears left to cry.

***

I realized later, and classmates pointed out, that I could have done more with the smells of the box and garage, or the taste of the tears. Definitely remember that during NaNoWriMo's revision phase. I also (as did most of the classmates I reviewed) tried to make this part of a narrative, which Scibona later told us was not his intention. It only needed to be a portrait, not a complete narrative.

If any of my writing critique partners are out there, they’ll recognize this as a fragment from a work in progress, although the assignments are not intended to give us a cut-and-paste formula for our NaNoWriMo opus.

Could I have managed better by writing longer paragraphs? Maybe. At least one of the classmates I reviewed simply gave up paragraphing altogether. I laughed and gave him/her a pass because the language of the writing was in keeping with the stated assignment.

About those writing classes – what are you waiting for?

Last month I posted about fall writing classes. I personally test as much about what I post as possible. So, when I found a class I’d never heard of before, even though it was vouched for by NaNoWriMo, the annual November writing marathon I’ve participated in several times, I took the plunge. It’s the series of writing courses offered by Coursera in cooperation with Wesleyan College. I’m halfway through my second course, and it’s wonderful!

This series -- about style, setting, character and plot -- is a one-time only offering from an established liberal arts school, taught by visiting professors who are also fine writers. Still, after I posted, readers had concerns. Even I had some concerns. 

The cost is $29 per course, each of which includes a series of four lectures, interviews with visiting writers and editors, readings, and writing assignments reviewed by other students. There’s also a requirement to review at least three other student writers/assignment. All this has been arranged by NaNoWriMo. I initially was taken aback by the possibility of graded assignments, but each assignment is purely pass-fail. No one need ever be shocked by your GPA.

image: pixabay

One reader worried that the $29 fee meant he was required to pay to participate in NaNoWriMo, a misconception which I blame myself for not clarifying. There is not, never has been, and no doubt never will be a charge to participate in NaNoWriMo. Yes, it’s a nonprofit organization, which like most nonprofits doesn’t refuse to have money thrown at it. But it doesn’t charge you to write.

In fact, if you want to take the NaNoWriMo-sponsored Coursera courses, you can do that completely free of charge. The only things you have to pay for are the chance to get and give feedback on the course’s writing assignments. The $29 also nets you an attractive certificate if you complete the course, which Coursera suggests you may want to add to LinkedIn or other social media sites.  (I’m still debating whether to display my certificate for completing the first course, The Craft of Style.)

I also clicked on a link asking Wesleyan for more information about its online courses and learned it has its own, non-NaNoWriMo, non-Coursera online courses. Each of them costs approximately $2,900. That’s not a typo. A standard online course at this old-line liberal arts college costs 100 times the price of the NaNoWriMo-Coursera version.

I’m sure students get more lectures, more writing assignments, more individual instruction in Wesleyan’s non-Coursera classes. After a couple of years of those, they also will have a master of fine arts degree in creative writing to add to their resumes. If they stay the course. For now, I’ll take a certificate or four and run.

Other readers, including members of my online critique group said, no, they never participate in NaNoWriMo. Or, holiday and family obligations prevent their participation.

That also worries me a bit. Is it because the stated aim of NaNoWriMo is to encourage writers to add 50,000 words to their novels in the single month of November? Does the thought of unwashed writers pecking away night and day on their keyboards, foregoing sleep, day jobs, and family daunt us? Does it make anybody who proclaims an interest in devoting an entire 30 days to a project sound crazy?

It should, of course. We’re writers. Crazy is what we do.

To be truthful, I’ve never hit the 50,000-word mark during NaNoWriMo. But I’ve added a few other tens of thousands of words to works in progress that might ever have gotten written without that impetus, still managed to meet a few other family, job, and community obligations. As well as the occasional meal and shower.

The NaNoWriMo-Coursera-Wesleyan series of four courses only runs through October 31, giving us time to finish before the magical month of November. And although each course is billed as a four-weeker, I did the first in two weeks, and look to meet that schedule for the second course. It’s even possible to knock out each of them in a week, but you may want to save your sleep deprivation for the NaNoWriMo marathon itself. Completed courses stay online for six months, giving writers a chance to review and refresh at our leisure.

If you missed your email from NaNoWriMo, or if you haven't yet made the commitment, see the Wesleyan site for details. Don’t hesitate too long. November waits for no writer.