The first day of spring this year is March 20, and between now and then there’s time for us to read some shorts stories and relearn some skills in language and writing. Here’s a short course and a new series of very short instructive talks on English grammar—all as the days slowly but surely get longer and warmer.
Writing Smartly Short Course
Reading Closely to Write
Beginning Wednesday evening, February 5, from 6:00 to 7:00 CT, Writing Smartly will offer again its four-week online short course entitled Reading Closely to Write. Each week we will examine the structure and stylistic design of sentences from one short story (each averaging about 15 pages) written by a celebrated author.
We will analyze the grammar and composition of certain significant sentences, and consider how other designs the author could have chosen would have produced different effects. Our emphasis will be on the grammar and language of the reading so that we can begin to develop an eye and ear for discovering our own natural written voice. By considering linguistic forms closely like this, we can come to appreciate the craft of language, training ourselves to discern assumptions and question implications—all to become more thoughtful about what we read and hear.
New selections this term will be from Short Story Masterpieces, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine (Dell Publishing, 1982), readily available at Amazon and elsewhere. Tuition for this four-session online short course is $300, paid through Zelle (ultimo@writingsmartly.com), or by personal check (please email me for the mailing address). Upon your registration, I will reply with a confirmation and the Zoom link for the course.
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One Topic, Thirty Minutes
Grammar has a notorious reputation, and one reason for that just might be that we try to take too much of it at one sitting: the subject is vast and it’s all too easy to quickly forget what we’ve learned when we don’t concentrate enough on one precise topic.
These very short talks on writing will each take up a single point of grammar and sentence structure, explain it thoroughly, and illustrate it with examples. This has been the format of posts published over the last few years on the Writing Smartly website, and we will use one of those articles as the text for each short talk in the series. As time allows, we’ll also set aside a few minutes at the end for specific questions you might have about the topic under discussion.
This new series, One Topic, Thirty Minutes, will meet Thursday evenings, February 6 through February 27, from 6:00 to 6:30 CT. The topics to be discussed (with accompanying posts hyperlinked) are: February 6: How to Look at a Sentence (The Essential Minimum); February 13, How to Revise (Revising by Clauses): February 20: Shaping Sentences (The Three Types of Sentences); and February 27: Using the Comma (Apposition, Once Again). Tuition for each talk is $30 (you may enroll for any one talk or the entire series), paid through Zelle (ultimo@writingsmartly.com), or by personal check (please email me for the mailing address). Upon your registration, I will reply with a confirmation and the Zoom link.
I hope you can join us for these new offerings from Writing Smartly.
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