Classes at Phoenix College

I'm going to enroll in the Topics in Writing: Fiction: Sit Down and Write, which is a 5 week summer class that meets online. I don't write fiction, but generally the intent of these kinds of classes is to keep people writing. The instructor for this session is Connie Flynn and she's just terrific.

The challenge and the beauty of this class is that it provides you both a motivation and an expectation to write each day. I've taken the class once before and it worked wonderfully; I wrote both on the project I'd set out to do and side projects that sprang up from the interaction of the students. I'd say of the 20-some students who registered, about a dozen were very active in sharing work, commenting on work, and posting side projects.

Another class being offered this summer is also a Topics in Writing: Fiction, but it's the quite frightening Draft a Novel in 30 Days. I knew a woman who went through this last fall, and after it was over, I saw her focusing on math courses a lot. But truly, she enjoyed the course and completed the challenge of 50,000 words. Sometimes I'm very glad I can't write fiction.