Catching Idle Butterflies

Making me think

About two years ago when I was about halfway through writing my first novel, I thought to myself, just because I think I am a good writer doesn't mean I am a good writer.

But how does one discover the answer to that question?

I began looking for creative writing courses, both locally and online. I soon stumbled upon the Christian Writer's Guild ( http://www.christianwritersguild.com ). They offer not only yearly memberships, but correspondence writing courses. At the time, they offered only the Apprentice course. It's a two year program where they teach you how to write many types of articles, nonfiction books, church drama, screenplays and finally fiction. The program has a total of 50 lessons, each to be sent to my mentor every two weeks, or when he sends back the previous lesson with his/her comments. Being only interested in fiction, I nonetheless figured, why constrain myself? I might find writing articles or screenplays is my calling, not writing novels or short stories.

Plus the two-year course costs $1000 if you pay up front, or $50 a month for twenty four months adding up to a total of $1200. That's a chunk of change. It took me six months to decide to sign up.

I have discovered through this course, that although my mentor thought a few of my articles were publishable with some polishing, towards the end I was so sick of nonfiction I wanted to hurl. I ached to finally get to the fiction portion.

Now I’m here, and boy did the first lesson take me by surprise. Normally, with each assignment, there are five to seven lessons to complete. This one has two.

The first is to write a parable similar to the stories Jesus told. That alone will be a challenge. But the second will be even tougher.

I’m required to write a letter to my readers. Afterwards, I have to search and destroy every statement that sounds arrogant or pious, thereby turning my readers off. The point is that one of the biggest complaints of Christian writings, both fiction and nonfiction, is that they sometimes reek of arrogance and “you’re going to Hell if you don’t agree with me” mentality. This lesson is designed to teach me to see my writing from the reader’s perspective.

The reason this will be a challenge is because I sometimes think my own writing reflects that same arrogance. And yet, learning not to write in such a manner will be very helpful. I’m looking forward to discovering whether or not I will succeed.