It's That Time Again...

Question & Answer Time!

I usually do this about every other month, so it's time to open the blog up to questions. What can you ask? Well, just about anything as long as it's PG-13. Need an example, perhaps?

Christine H read my mind yesterday and asked a great question in comments: What type of training did you invest in? What about it was so helpful? Are there any courses that you would personally recommend?

I didn't invest in much, if you mean paying for writing classes, etc. My knowledge comes more from trial and error, getting lots of feedback, and reading.

In college I took all of one creative writing class. I didn't have to take freshman English because I scored high on my AP English test in high school, so the only other writing class I took was the required advanced course. I picked technical writing. Since I graduated in English linguistics with a minor in editing, I had a lot of language expertise, but not exactly in creative writing.

I also worked for BYU's multicultural magazine, Eagle's Eye. I wrote, edited, and designed for them my entire time at school. I loved it.

When I started up writing stories again, I jumped into the online community and got lots of feedback, read agent blogs, made a lot of mistakes, fixed my mistakes, read a lot of books, worked my butt off, etc. Rinse and repeat.

So I guess I'm not the one to be recommending courses or whatever. If I'm being honest, the two I took weren't super helpful overall. What was more helpful was actually writing a whole book, realizing it sucked, and doing it again. And again. What also helped was reading a lot of stories, learning what worked. My agent was also a huge help in teaching me how to really dig into edits and improve a story.

Training can come from anywhere, I think. It's all helpful. So don't worry about spending a ton of money if you don't have it.

See how fun that was? You could have your question answered too! All you have to do is ask.