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. 

Independent Bookstore Day is April 27, but every day is a good day to visit a bookstore. Here are a few favourites....

Ben McNally Books, Toronto

Saturday, April 27, 2024 is Independent Bookstore Day. But the other 364 days of the year are also good times to go. 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/

Close to paradise ~ My first stay at Arowhon Pines Resort, by Brian Henry

Nothing settles my heart like an Algonquin lake. For me, sitting on the porch that wraps around the dining hall at Arowhon Pines this past June,* drinking a morning coffee while watching the mist rise off the lake came pretty close to paradise.

Hummingbirds hovered at the feeders, their wings whirring with the effort of keeping them stationary, while down at the far end of the lake, a minuscule smudge in the shallows showed up in my binoculars as a bull moose munching on water lilies. Best of all, though, I had a pen, a notebook, and time. Lots of time. I loved it.

Decades back, I was keen on canoe-tripping into the interior of Algonquin Park. But the ground seems to have gotten harder and canoes heavier; after the last time I took a trip that required  carrying a canoe from lake to lake and sleeping on the ground, I couldn’t stand up straight for a week.

But having a real bed was just the start. Then there was the food. Dinner on Friday evening featured a choice of lobster in passion fruit; roasted chicken with Arowhon stuffing and house cranberry sauce; roast loin of venison; or orange and ginger glazed tofu. It was a tough choice, even though for us the lobster was out (not remotely kosher, you know).

To my family’s collective sighs of pity, I went for the tofu, but the flavours were so sharp and complex that it stacked up well against both the venison and the chicken.

If you wanted, you might avoid the hell of having to choose by ordering a half portion of all four entrees. But for myself I was close to full just from the buffet of appetizers (the salad strewn with edible flowers was my favourite) and I wanted to leave at least some room for the buffet of desserts. Among those, I voted for the homemade wild blueberry ice-cream as best of the buffet, but the kids were passionate advocates for the maple mousse and the butter tarts (winners of some award or other).

And of course in between the appetizers and the main course, there was also the mushroom soup with a truffle cream, which was simply the best soup I’ve ever had. So I can’t recommend ordering the whole dinner menu – that was a strategy I reserved for breakfast, where I asked for almost everything: half portions of smoked whitefish, eggs, potatoes and toast, French toast, and cinnamon pancakes, plus juice and coffee. Lots of wonderful coffee.

For lunch on Friday, we all ordered fish and chips (delicious). Lunch on Saturday was a buffet with far too many dishes to begin to describe, but I have to give special mention to the outstanding bean and mushroom salad, the Scotch eggs, the tomato basil soup, and the edible flowers everywhere.

But what I loved most was how we could go from enjoying food that’s as good as it gets, take one step outside and be at the edge of the wilderness, with Little Joe Lake at our doorstep and a series of other lakes within an afternoon’s paddle. We took three trips out on these lakes: once a guided tour on a small pontoon boat; once all four of us in a pair of canoes; and once me and my son in a pair of kayaks.

We saw moose on every outing. More accurately, we hung out with moose. A mama and her calf were happy to let us drift close enough that we could hear them munching their water lilies; close enough to smell them. They paid no more attention to us than to a loon that swam by.

Brian vs William, photo by Emma

My son and I had to go swimming, too, though it hadn’t been a warm spring, and even with the sun high overhead, the air temperature didn’t rise above 22⁰. But, heck, we were at a wilderness lodge and a few other hearty people were jumping off the dock, so we did, too.

Georgian Bay has colder water. William promptly turned blue and his extremities went numb, so I told him to get out while he could still climb the ladder. As for me, well, that breakfast I’d had and the extra pounds I still posses provided warm insulation.

We also hit the games room for a family ping-pong tournament and to introduce the kids to the wonders of a well-salted shuffleboard table. Possibly this was a mistake. At a restaurant back in Toronto, William demonstrated to one of his buddies how salt acts like ball bearings, erasing friction so that salt and pepper shakers – and even dinner plates – glide and spin as effortlessly as pucks on a shuffleboard table.

Perhaps, though, we experienced the most marvelous wonder of the trip that night as we headed back to our cabin. With the closest traffic eight kilometers down a back road through the woods, the quiet was profound and the sky clear of reflected light. In the west, an orb hung in the sky as bright as a spotlight.

In books, I’ve read references to airline pilots mistaking Venus for an on-coming aircraft but had never before understood how this was possible. Now I did. The sky was so clear that Venus didn’t look like just another star; it was plainly a disc, a goddess shining in the heavens.  

Sunset over Little Joe Lake, by Emma Henry

Note: I took this trip in June 2015 to check out Arowhon as a site for holding writers' retreats. It passed! The subsequent retreats have been great, too. Read reviews and other pieces inspired by of the retreats offered so far here (and scroll down).

Check out details upcoming retreats, at Arowhon Pines and other locales here (and scroll down). 

See my upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.