Last Thursday, Mason and Morgan went back to school. Today, it was my turn.
This semester I’ll be taking three graduate classes: Commercial Nonfiction, Graduate Tutorial in Writing, and Epublishing, for a total of eight credit hours. I suppose it’s not very cool to admit that I am looking forward to each of these classes. (I’m okay with that.)
In Commercial Nonfiction Book, we’ll be going through the process of planning, writing, pitching and marketing a nonfiction book. I know there are things I could have done to make Commodork and Invading Spaces better, and with other nonfiction books in the hopper, I am greatly looking forward to gleaning useful information from this class.
Epublishing takes place over three days and is only one credit hour, but I have no doubt that this class will help me with future projects.
Finally, there’s Graduate Tutorial in Writing. This “class” is actually a weekly one-on-one session with a professor in the professional writing program who has published roughly 40 novels! During our sessions my professor will review submitted writing samples, critique them, and help me with story plotting. My goal for this class is to produce a marketable novel by the end of the semester. I have a great idea for a novel I’ve been massaging over the summer, and I’m really looking forward to turning it into a book.
Beginning yesterday, I changed my work hours to 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. I’m not a huge fan of early mornings, but it works well with my afternoon school schedule. I’ve taken afternoon naps the past two days (a habit I need to break) and still find my way to bed by 10 p.m., unusually early for me. Early mornings wear me out.
It took me 45 minutes to drive to Norman today from work and 90 minutes to get home. For years I’ve heard that the city of Norman loves to tear up every road surrounding the University of Oklahoma and schedules this construction as inconveniently as possible, but for the third semester in a row, I’ve had the opportunity to experience it first hand. This semester the city has torn up both the Lindsey exit from I-35 and the same street closer to the school. I’ve found alternate routes, but city streets combined with school traffic and 5 o’clock madness makes for a long drive home. It’s time to work out a different route and load my phone up with new podcasts.
After this semester I’ll have 17 credit hours left — three semesters, tops. But the great thing about this program is, I’m learning things in every class, every day, that are making me a better writer. I won’t be waiting three semesters to start applying these lessons. I’ve already started, in fact.