Saturday was the first day what promises to be a year-long online novel writing class. It’s offered by Writers Village University, which is not really a university but a loosely knit writer’s group with hundreds of classes and forums to improve your writing and meet other writers. Everyone from absolute beginners to published novelists post there with ideas, suggestions and encouraging words. I can’t say enough good about that site. It does charge a membership fee, but if you’re looking for a place to jumpstart your writing, check it out.
The class I’m taking is based on The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray, first published in 1994 with a new edition in 2005. To get things started, we all posted a couple of paragraphs. Here’s one of mine. It’s based on a park here in Long Beach. Can you guess which one it is?
Nothing was quite square in Four Square Park. The ornate Victorian bandstand teetered on its crumbling foundation, a dingy and battered ghost of its former glory. Only one of the oaks planted at each corner of the park at its opening ceremony survived. Twisted and gnarled and gouged with knifed-in initials, it fought for sunlight among the top-heavy pines. Three savage rose bushes, the last vestiges of a formal garden, stood watch over their few pallid blooms with razor sharp thorns next to the public toilet, which emitted extra strength aromas of Lysol and urine. While weeds clogged the forgotten old horseshoe pitch, the area surrounding the ragtag playground was worn to dust by families who thronged there every weekend. No, nothing was quite right in this place, but the people stuck in the traffic that clogged Park Avenue didn’t seem to notice. They had more important things to think about and more attractive places to go.
The class I’m taking is based on The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray, first published in 1994 with a new edition in 2005. To get things started, we all posted a couple of paragraphs. Here’s one of mine. It’s based on a park here in Long Beach. Can you guess which one it is?
Nothing was quite square in Four Square Park. The ornate Victorian bandstand teetered on its crumbling foundation, a dingy and battered ghost of its former glory. Only one of the oaks planted at each corner of the park at its opening ceremony survived. Twisted and gnarled and gouged with knifed-in initials, it fought for sunlight among the top-heavy pines. Three savage rose bushes, the last vestiges of a formal garden, stood watch over their few pallid blooms with razor sharp thorns next to the public toilet, which emitted extra strength aromas of Lysol and urine. While weeds clogged the forgotten old horseshoe pitch, the area surrounding the ragtag playground was worn to dust by families who thronged there every weekend. No, nothing was quite right in this place, but the people stuck in the traffic that clogged Park Avenue didn’t seem to notice. They had more important things to think about and more attractive places to go.
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