Saturday, March 19, 2011

Writers Village University

I found a cool site for writers.

Writers Village University. This is an on-line course site that offers classes on writing. You can find courses in fiction (short story, novel...etc), non-fiction, poetry, etc. They even have MFA courses. It is $69 a year ($99 the first year because of the one $30 fee). I am taking a few courses at the moment and they are very helpful. Some of them are peer-facilitated, while others have a facilitator.

There is a free site that is associated with it called F2K Social. I have not joined that, but what I hear from others is that it is a good stepping stone before you sign up for WVU. It seems to be run differently, but it is still a good chance to see what it is about before commiting.

I haven't written for an on-line writing site in a while, but my first partial story was pretty bad. It was about 4 guys in the 1920s playing poker in a seedy, smoke filled bar. OK, I didn't pick the topic, it was given to me, I just picked the era and the place. What do I know about Poker? or the 1920s for that matter.

Hickey stood and pulled his piece from his waistband. “You wanna rephrase that last comment?” His gap toothed smile and tick gave way to a stone face and steady hand.

That's right, I have a character named Hickey!! What of it? LOL!

The course is loads of fun, it is having me write things I would not normally write. I mean really...

Also I found a very good Readability Calculator on line. I like this one because it is indepth. However, if you are trying to achieve a certain type of lingo, it kind of reads it as poor English, so take it with a grain of salt.

2 comments:

NurseArtist said...

Thanks for the blurb, Liz! I've belonged to WVU since 1997 and absolutely love it! I'm mentoring a free class called F2K there, along with some really awesome people. We are Writers Helping Writers.
Check us out!

Carrie A Ryman said...

Great article, Liz. Thank you! I was considering this online writing program, myself so your info helped a lot. Still thinking about it, but will check out that chatroom first.