The online Creative Writing for Beginners course I’m taking defines Creative Writing to be any writing, whether it’s how to write a web server in assembly language, the sex lives of long-dead civilizations, or cute scantily clad cat-girls fighting Demon Lords. The last is my favorite of the three.
I’ve had some ideas for stories bouncing around my head recently and started to write them down. This led to the realization that I enjoyed the creative process of building characters, and the worlds they live in, and creating adventures for them to experience. In my opinion reality sucks and this is a great way to ignore the real world and be creative and feel like I’m being productive.
Personally, I prefer reading fiction. Fantasy, science fiction, and horror are my favorite genres, and I think my stories will fall into those categories. I have already a few ideas for stories and even started writing one, and they all fall into these genres.
I asked my wife to critique a couple of the stories I wrote and realized, from her feedback, that I needed to improve my writing skills. I trust her opinion because she is 3 book a weak reader, and although she may not know much about writing, she knows what makes up a good story. So when she told me the story idea is good but the writing could be improved, I looked for help. I signed up for an online Creative Writing for Beginners class from Univeral Class via my local library.
I like the class so far. It covers the basics and is in small enough chunks that I can get something done every day. It has already made me think differently about my writing and helped with understanding some of the structural norms for good writing.
Most of the lessons include a written component based on the topic of the lesson. Since I already have this blog set up, I’m going to post those here and when or if feedback is provided, I’ll post that as well. Maybe some other aspiring writer will get something out of that.
My goal, once I’m a bit more confident and have written, and rewritten each story multiple times, I’ll publish them here as well. Then again, I may also get distracted by something shiny and forget I ever thought about writing and not publish anything for over a year before I pick up a new hobby to post about.
Happy reading. Cheers.