I started today a writing course, courtesy of my employer, where a handful of people meet and learn from a “professional” to write.

It is essentially a motivation course designed to have people too shy to begin writing alone actually have a writing obligation.

The course happens once a month for six months, three hours per seance. During those seances, we have about an hour chat with the tutor (where she reads things to us), an hour writing, and an hour spent reading our work to the group and critiquing.

I’d like to talk about my first course. However, I was told that “whatever happens in writing club stays in writing club”, so I won’t be too specific.

First Hour

First observation : between the five attendees, I am the only male. Apparently, writing is a female want, and no sane male should have applied to that group therapy. The female part in me feels very empowered right now.

Now, the attendees writing curriculum is not as basic as what I would have thought, since two people had written before on and off, one of them having almost finished a novel. I was afraid to stand out with my novel and a half, but I’m not : that’s good.

My impressions on the tutor are mixed at this time : she (yes, the tutor too is a woman) is very calm and nice, but all her references are literary, so I have some trouble sending my ideas across at times (since I have a mostly anglo-american writing culture). Apparently, outlining is frowned upon here, as is character building. French writers appear to spill their guts and come up with sellable pieces. When I introduced myself, and I said that I wanted to become better at editing, the people around me looked astonished, since obviously a first draft is enough.

Second Hour

Our writing prompt this week was to write a journal entry relating the events that happened to us an hour before. I thought that quite dull, until I asked if I was allowed to invent things and the tutor said yes.

So, I brainstormed for five minutes, and came up with a nice little story. I spent the rest of my allotted time typing like mad and produced a nice 950 words piece (I think I scared them all with my discovery-writer typing speed).

For once in my life, I wrote something in first person with a strong funny voice that I’m pleased about. I even managed to put a twist in the end, so that 950 words story stands on itself and really is a short-short story. I’m very pleased with that and hope to be able to reproduce the same level of storytelling in the remaining five sessions.

When I read the piece to the others, I made them laugh (at the right places even), and they said they liked it. As it’s the first time, people are a little shy about critiquing and I expect the reviews to be much harsher next time, but it was kinda nice to have people enjoy my writing.

Third Hour

One of the persons there produced a sort of travelogue that though it was well written (very flowery and all), lacked action. One other produced a straight out rendition of her hour before coming. She managed to have it come as quite lively, Bridget Jones style, but it lacked a story behind. The last person read to us a piece that I can only qualify as literary fiction, with plays on meanings, parabolas and such. It was very cleverly done, but utterly uninteresting to me, as I do hate that style.

I warned that person that she was writing for a very small audience (I even sparked some debate here, where I compared her work to Inception (but Inception didn’t start at the first line by being weird)). I don’t think she minds having a small reader base, so good for her!

If I recap the pieces that were read, I’m the only one who came up with fiction work. I find that disturbing, since I essentially am interested in the storytelling part of fiction, and not the flowery wordplay part. We’ll see how that pans out in the next session.

All in all, a very interesting morale boost for me. I wish I had one session like this every week!