Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Exploring Other Forms of Writing

I love taking writing classes. 

Over the years I've taken numerous classes in writing for children. The most recent class I took was an online class and even though I missed the face to face interaction and some of the real life connections that have come out of my previous classes taking an online class opened me up to the possibility of taking more classes while not being limited by location and time.

I love how the simple act of taking a class can make me think about writing in a new way.

Over the years I've taken many classes in writing for children and they have all been great. In addition I've taken other classes- Writing the Personal Essay and now Copywriting 101.

I've been doing some research and have been exploring the field of copywriting.  It's exciting to learn about an area of writing that I haven't given much thought to. 

It's also fun to think about the possibility of writing and maybe getting paid for my ability to string words together in a coherent fashion while I'm writing and submitting kid lit stuff.

Last year some financial issues meant I had to work during a 6 week layoff from my main job. While I'm lucky to have built the connections where I was able to have work during that time it was really difficult to leave my writing for all that time. After factoring in commute time, long days, and hypothyroid I had very little energy to write at the end of the day. I felt like I was abandoning my characters, my stories, and my dreams. I felt like I failed and that I let myself down.

I really hope that I don't have to do that or make that kind of choice again and I'm hoping that eventually copywriting could provide me with some work so I wouldn't have to make that choice again.