Summer courses: Writing Personal Stories 101, Writing Little Kid Lit, and Intensive Creative Writing

“Writing Personal Stories 101” 

 ~ A class dedicated to the pleasures of writing your stories & insights

Online: Tuesday afternoons, 1 – 3 p.m.
July 2 – Aug 13, 2024
Offered on Zoom and accessible from anywhere there's internet 

If you've ever considered writing your personal stories, this course is for you. We’ll look at memoirs, travel writing, personal essays, family history ~ personal stories of all kinds. Plus, of course, we’ll work on creativity and writing technique and have fun doing it. 

Whether you're writing a book or just get your thoughts down on paper, this weekly course will get you going. We'll reveal the tricks and conventions of telling true stories, and we’ll show you how to use the techniques of the novel to recount actual events. Weekly writing exercises and friendly feedback from the instructor will help you move forward on this writing adventure. Whether you want to write for your family and friends or for a wider public, don't miss this course.

We’ll also have Sue Williams, author of the memoir, Ready to Come About, as a guest speaker.

Fee: $212.39 plus 13% hst = $240

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

“Writing Little Kid Lit”

Board Books, Picture Books & Middle Grade Books

Online: Wednesday evenings, 7 – 9 p.m.
July 3 – Aug 14, 2024
Offered on Zoom and accessible from anywhere there's internet 

This course is for adults {or teens} interested in writing board books, picture books, Chapter Books, or Middle Grade books. This course is accessible for beginners and meaty enough for advanced writers. Through lectures, in-class assignments, homework, and feedback on your writing, we’ll give you ins and outs of writing for younger readers and set you on course toward writing your own books.

We’ll also have a published author as a guest speaker for this course.

Fee: $212.39 plus 13% hst = $240

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

“Intensive Creative Writing”

Offered online at 2 different times:

Tuesday evenings 6:30 – 9:00
July 2 – August 13, 2024 (extending to Aug 20 if it fills up).
First readings emailed June 25.

And

Wednesday afternoons, 12:30 – 3:00
July 3 – August 14, 2024 (extending to Aug 21 if it fills up).
First readings emailed June 26

Intensive Creative Writing isn't for beginners; it's for people who are working on their own writing projects. You’ll be asked to bring in several pieces of your writing for detailed feedback. All your pieces may be from the same work, such as a novel in progress, or they may be stand-alone pieces. You bring whatever you want to work on. 

Besides critiquing pieces, the instructor will give short lectures addressing the needs of the group, and in addition to learning how to critique your own work and receiving constructive suggestions about your writing, you’ll discover that the greatest benefits come from seeing how your classmates approach and critique a piece of writing and how they write and re-write. This is a challenging course, but extremely rewarding.

Fee: $247.79 + hst = $280

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Instructor Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He publishes Quick Brown Fox, Canada's most popular blog for writers, taught creative writing at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and has led workshops everywhere from Boston to Buffalo and from Sarnia to Saint John. Brian is the author of a children's version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Tribute Publishing). But his proudest boast is that he has helped many of his students get published.  

Read reviews and other pieces about or inspired by Brian's writing courses, workshops, and retreats here (and scroll down).

See all of Brian’s upcoming one-day workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats here. 

Every day is a good day to visit a bookstore. Here are a few favourites....

White Mountain Publications and Bookstore, Cobalt, Ontario, home of the Canadian Writers' Contest Calendar

Every year, Independent Bookstore Day comes on the fourth Saturday in April. But the other 364 days of the year are also good times to visit your local bookstore. Here's a few of the bookstores in Ontario:

ALMONTE: Mill Street Books

ARNPRIOR: Arnprior Book Shop

A Different Drummer Books, Burlington

BAYFIELD: The Village Bookshop

BOLTON: Forsters Book Garden

BRACEBRIDGE: The Owl Books

BRIGHTON: Lighthouse Books

BURLINGTON: A Different Drummer Books {which hosts many book launches}; 
By the Lake Books (A great used bookstore just around the corner from where I teach my in-person classes in Burlington. ~Brian) 

COBALT: White Mountain Publishing

COBURG: Let's Talk Books

ELORA: Magic Pebble

GANANOQUE: Beggars Banquet Books

GODERICH: Fincher's

Want some ideas on what books to buy? Check out this post and this one, and for more books and 70+ other gifts for writers, check out this post.  

GUELPH: BookShelf

HALIBURTON: Master's Bookstore

HAMILTON: The City and The City Books;  EpicBooks;  MixedMedia

Indigo/Chapters has branches all over the place. {Yes, I know it's not an independent, but it's not Amazon, either.)

KINCARDINE: Fincher's

KINGSTON: Novel Idea

Bookshelf, Guelph

LAKEFIELD: Happenstance Books and Yarns

LONDON: Oxford Book Shop

MISSISSAUGA: The Book Wardrobe 

NEW LISKEARD: Chat Noir

NORTH BAY: Allison The Bookman

ORANGEVILLE: BookLore

ORILLIA: Manticore Books

OTTAWA: Books onBeechwood;  Perfect Books

PARRY SOUND:Parry Sound Books

PETEROROUGH: Hunter Street Books

PORT HOPE: FurbyHouse Books Inc.

SARNIA: The Book Keeper

Novel Idea, Kingston

STRATFORD: Fanfare Books;  Fundamentals Books & Toys;  Theatre Store

ST. CATHARINES: Someday Books

SUDBURY: Bay Used Books

THORNHILL: The Batner Bookstore

TORONTO: Another Story; Bakka Phoenix (online only): The Beguiling; Ben McNally Books; Book City; Caversham Books; A Different Booklist; Ella Minnow; Flying Books; Moonbeam Books; Novel Spot; Parentbooks; Queen Books; Sleuth of Baker Street Ltd.; Squibb's Stationers; Type Books

UXBRIDGE: Blue Heron Books

WATERLOO: Words Worth Books

WINDSOR: Biblioasis

Looking for gifts for writers? See here {and scroll down}

See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.

Two poems by Julie Whitley

 

“Lessons in Natural Writing”

  Make the mental shift: feel yourself float,

let words and                          associations freely

mix.  Sense that time             changes pace, sidesteps

as the world                                                         surges past.

Make the mental shift;                                         let emotions

and images rub                                              shoulders, pictures

whole but mute.                                                          Unstop your

innocent, random                                                             wondering.

Make the mental shift;                                                               feel the

rhythms, hear                                                                   the sounds

play with the                                                              language of

ideas and                                                        shape a choice.

Make the mental shift;                                         focus

the emergent patterns                             complex

and unique, the                         lightning flash

of vision that begs                   you to write

Now make the  mental shift

 

Life’s Circles

Life circles, souls renew. Ancient friends and lovers,

Seek each other anew, In the faces now of others.

In the eyes, dwells the soul. When like hearts meet,

The exchange is whole. And half becomes complete.

 

Julie Whitley is the author of the Secrets of the Home Wood series, a fantasy adventure. She has been enjoying her retirement from nursing with a return to her early passions of writing prose and poetry and painting. She works in both oils and watercolour. Her three grandsons joyfully occupy the remainder of her time.

See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.

Something new: You can get new postings on Quick Brown Fox sent to your Inbox as they go up. Just visit the new Quick Brown Fox Substack page, and like and subscribe: https://brian999.substack.com/

Chag Pesach Sameach ~ Happy Passover!

 

At every Passover Seder, we put out an extra cup of wine for Elijah, just in case he should happen by, bringing with him hope and redemption ~ which this year, we need more than ever. This year also we have an extra place setting at the Seder table for the 133 hostages still held in bondage. We can’t fully celebrate a festival of freedom until they, too, are free.

Sparkles and Karim ~ a new novel by Dave Moores

Hi, Brian.

My novel Sparkles and Karim was published this week and is available on Amazon. My sincere thanks to you and all folks in the Thursday afternoon “Extreme” class who definitely helped sandpaper off the rough edges, and enabled me to realize every writer’s dream of actually getting published!

Dave

Sparkles and Karim

Iraq, 2014. ISIS is on a roll and Sparkles and Karim need to find a dangerous cache of radioactive material before it's used to make some western city glow.

Major Michelle Wilson, age 32, callsign Sparkles, a US fighter pilot, and Karim Hamid, age 21, callsign Black Flag, a US soldier of Iraqi descent, raised in the US and planted inside ISIS by the CIA have both committed serious infractions, breaking away from their assigned duties, albeit for reasons readers will applaud. 

To atone for their dereliction, they find themselves forced to team up on a perilous mission from Baghdad to Mosul – a city already taken by ISIS – posing as an ISIS couple.

He’s an impulsive risk-taker with little sense of fear, she’s a driven, uptight perfectionist. They’re sceptical of each other initially, but as they face betrayal and the barbarity of jihad, they learn to value each other and become a team in ways they had never imagined.

Dave Moores 

Raised in Bristol, UK, Dave now lives in Oakville, Ontario. Dave’s first novel, Windward Legs, was set in the sailing milieu of Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe. His second novel, Attitude, was a young adult crime fiction novel. But although wildly disparate in content, all of Dave’s novels share the same page-turning intensity.

Sparkles and Karim is available from Amazon here.

Note: If you’re interested in getting published, come to our in-person “How to Get Published” workshop on May 11 in Niagara on the Lake (details here).

See all my upcoming  weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and four-day retreats here. ~Brian

See more new books by your fellow authors – and invites to their book launches – here (and scroll down).

You're invited to “Writing Personal Stories 101,” an online weekly class

“Writing Personal Stories 101” 

 ~ A class dedicated to the pleasures of writing your stories & finding your insights

Online: Tuesday afternoons, 1 – 3 p.m.
July 2 – Aug 13, 2024
Offered on Zoom and accessible from anywhere there's internet 

Note: See all summer writing courses on offer here.

If you've ever considered writing your personal stories, this course is for you. We’ll look at memoirs, travel writing, personal essays, family history ~ personal stories of all kinds. Plus, of course, we’ll work on creativity and writing technique and have fun doing it. 

Whether you're writing a book or just get your thoughts down on paper, this weekly course will get you going. We'll reveal the tricks and conventions of telling true stories, and we’ll show you how to use the techniques of the novel to recount actual events. Weekly writing exercises and friendly feedback from the instructor will help you move forward on this writing adventure. Whether you want to write for your family and friends or for a wider public, don't miss this course.

Guest speaker Sue Williams lives in Guelph, Ontario, with her husband. She worked as an occupational therapist and never dreamt of being a writer. But, after a life altering experience, she found herself with a story she felt needed telling and set about learning how to tell it.

The first of many creative writing courses Sue took was this course, “Writing Personal Stories.” It was exactly what she needed at the time, and she never looked back.

Sue’s memoir, Ready to Come About (Dundurn Press, 2019) is endorsed by Miriam Toews, New York Times best-selling author of Women Talking, and Cate Cochran, CBC Radio producer of The Sunday Edition. It has been promoted by The Globe and Mail, Canadian Yachting, Good Old Boat, and her professional magazine, Occupational Therapy Now. And it has been a staff pick at many independent bookstores. Also, her memoir was released as an audiobook by Scribd (now Everand) and has more recently been translated into Portuguese.

Sue has just completed a novel set in the largely invisible world of home care for which she is beginning to look for a publishing home. 

You can read more about Ready to Come About at Dundurn Press here.

Instructor Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He publishes Quick Brown Fox, Canada's most popular blog for writers, taught creative writing at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and has led workshops everywhere from Boston to Buffalo and from Sarnia to Saint John.  But his proudest boast is that he has helped many of his students get published.  

Read reviews and other pieces about or inspired by Brian's writing courses, workshops, and retreats here (and scroll down).

Fee: $212.39 plus 13% hst = $240

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

See all of Brian’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.