The past eight weeks have absolutely flown by and the Future Learn course on creative writing I have been undertaking has sadly come to an end.
I have learnt quite a lot in the past few weeks, such as how important it is to constantly read through your work and the significance of being able to edit, edit edit!
It is easy to presume writers will just write down whatever comes in to their head and then that’s it, job done. However, being a writer is much more than that, there is a lot of thought that needs to go into the choice of words and sentence structure to really portray a character to the reader and of course making the story interesting and readable.
The course has really opened my eyes as to how to piece together a good piece of creative writing and I am really keen to find other courses to help me hone my writing skills further.
At the end of the course we were asked to submit a 1,000 word short story. The last time I had written a short story I was in High School, which is quite a few years ago now. I was slightly worried that I would not be able to think up of a good enough idea to submit for the course.
Although I have written lots of non-fiction pieces and poetry, writing a short story was never something I had considered. Although I have had a few ideas for stories they tended to be for more lengthy pieces rather than for something that could be written about in 1000 words.
However, not one to shy away from a challenge I gave it my best shot and wrote 1000 words exactly! After hitting the submit button, I then awaited to see what feedback I would receive, which was more daunting than writing the actual piece!
The comments I received were constructive and also very positive!
I know in my previous post I said I would publish any work that I was particularly proud of, and this short story is one I would like to share. However, I have just submitted the story to a magazine for consideration of publication, so I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed for some positive news on this before revealing any of the story on the blog!
And if the crossing of the fingers and toes doesn’t work out and I do get rejected, then so be it, life is to short to worry about it, instead I will continue working on my craft and enjoy the process of writing creatively.
Blog soon
Stephanie x
It's Definitely Stephanie! 