Wednesday, September 08, 2010

F2K ~ FREE Writing Course

New and Improved F2K!

The art of writing is not a skill you just stumble upon. It takes awhile to master all the things that go into writing and sometimes we need a course to help move us into the next level of our journey.

Writer’s Village University offers a seven week FREE Writing Course, to refresh your muse, if you’re already a writer, or to dapple in the craft if you think it might be something you’re interested in; either way it is FREE and you have nothing to lose.

This session was the most exciting in all of my years mentoring. We have 8 classrooms, 8 volunteer mentors, and over 200 hundred students divided into those rooms. Now that may sound like a lot of people and a little intimidating, but believe me, after the first week, the students have either lost interest, life intervened, or find that this is just not for them. But this session, it was as if all the students stayed around to finish the course.

Our first week, the Master Administrator, Bob Hembree, switched the format of the board on us. The mentors were learning the boards as well as the students, but we adapt quickly. Why the switch? The old format was dated and Bob wanted to move us into the 21st century. Apparently these things take time to build and it wasn’t ready until we had all started in f2k. It went smoothly, like butter on bread.

New doorways were opened; we had a Social Scene, in a facebook like setting, where students came and introduced themselves, made friends, and uploaded avatars. Groups were formed, discussions were broached, music and photos were shared and we rode into the sunset of newness with a finesse that rattled the world of writing. The classrooms remain private and professional!

A bonus this session was that of a certificate of completion! If you posted your six lessons, gave ample feedback in these seven weeks, then you were rewarded with a Certificate of Completion. You could not just post the lessons and get a certificate. We are a peer to peer feedback course and if you don’t participate in giving feedback then you have not completed the requirements of the course.

We also produce people seeking publication and one woman had her lesson six accepted by an online magazine. Although we require your lesson six to be something NEW that you write FOR THIS COURSE, she had obviously written and submitted the story weeks prior to this course. Everyone was like, “I helped critique that!” But lo and behold, it had already been in the hands of the publisher before your crit.

That’s okay. We take pride in seeing one of our own publish ANY work! :) Congrats Kriti Bajaj on her work The Dream Catcher!  
 
We will have new doors opening again this session come October 6th. Possible publication in our new f2kzine? Bait bait bait... lol I don’t need to bait anyone, this course stands alone on its strength in producing writer’s. It sure doesn’t need me bragging about the course. 

Hope to see you then!

Important: Lessons and Classrooms will not be visible until course start date.

4 comments:

June said...

Can't wait for the October F2K, Joni!

Hope Bob H has the "new" lessons out soon...

Congratulations to Kriti Lilian Bajaj for her story!

:)

joni said...

I'm getting excited too, to see all the new stuff he has planned. It'll be a little more challenging for both mentors and students, but fun nonetheless! :)

Kriti said...

Hi Joni, just happened to come across this post right now, and wanted to let you know that I had written that story solely for the course, not prior to it. Every Day Fiction accepts stories on a rolling basis and it was only after the great feedback that I got for the story at F2K that I decided to send it in. They'd said they take up to 2 months to reach a decision on a story but I got one within a few days - I was (pleasntly) surprised too. just thought I'd let you know :)

joni said...

Congrats Iris, and like I said, it doesn't matter when or where you wrote it, we take pride in moving the writer forward and onto publication!

We have MANY of these stories move onto publication and they all come back to thank us. :)

Congrats!