Thank you so much for joining the course!
I’m so excited to be sharing this course with all of you! Over 100 students have already taken the course, and it’s a great bunch. People have been actively making connections and new friends on the Facebook Group
First things first, please click “Join Group” on the Facebook Group for our class, toward the upper right on that link.
Tell us where you’ve been on your writing journey so far, where you want to head, and your #1 stumbling block for living the writer’s life you want.
In the Facebook Group, go to Files–> Class Recording Downloads to access recordings of class sessions.
RECOMMENDED READING
There are no “textbooks” for this course. However, there are several books on writing that I highly recommend you buy and read, while you’re listening to the course or later. These are the best three books on writing I know of, and they are highly complementary to the approach to writing I’ll be sharing here.
Writing With Power by Peter Elbow – I know of no better book to knock people out of writer’s block and get them putting tons and tons of words on paper. They key to his approach is to separate the mental act of writing from the mental act of editing–they are two entirely different thought processes, and when people try to do them at the same time (as most people do) things go awry.
Revising Prose by Richard Lanham – Kind of pricey (it’s a college textbook) but don’t let that deter you, this book will be one of the best investments into your writing style you ever make. It’s a masterful guide to cutting the fat and lard out of your writing and leaving clear, crisp, clean prose. And, despite the dull title, it’s quite funny and entertaining too.
A Lover’s Quarrel: On Writing and the Writing Life by Thomas Farber – By my writing mentor (who will join us later in the course), this is the best book I know of on living the writer’s life. If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, you will see yourself in the pages of this book- the passions, manias, injuries to ego and pride, obsessions, and subtle joys of being a writer and writing. You will come to know yourself more deeply as a writer, the glorious highs and terrifying lows, through this book.
ARTICLES
I also highly recommend you read this article by Ryan Holiday, who will also be joining us at some point in the course: “So You Want to Write a Book? “Want” is Not Nearly Enough – I don’t agree with every piece of advice in there, but overall I find it a very accurate assessment of the challenges and travails of writing, and the kind of stubborn push-through-it-all mindset necessary to write a project to completion.
And this piece by our classmate Tim King, On Being “Weird” is a wonderful expression of the fear many of us have- of being judged for those most vulnerable and idiosyncratic parts of ourselves, which we broadcast for everyone to potentially judge and make fun of in our writing.
That’s it for now. I can’t wait to see you on the call tomorrow night!
Oh, and one more thing. If you’d like to put up a Facebook post or blog or tweet about this course, I’m happy to share with you a commission ($75) for anyone you bring to the course through sharing it with your tribe! You can sign up for your own tracking link here (takes 1 min to sign up) and you’re off to the races, ready to share that link with your tribe. I’d love if you shared this course with your community- the more the merrier.
Thank you!
–Michael