I would like to share with you my accolades for both Margo L. Dill and Melanie Faith, two instructors of yours who have changed my entire writing life. If you would like to share my letter in the e-zine, that's fine. But my objective is to just let you know the major impact each of them have had on my life.
About six to eight months ago, while doing yet another Conceptis puzzle, avoiding my writing (perhaps afraid of it), I said to myself, "Self, this is utterly ridiculous. What in the world are you doing, or more importantly not doing? Does this feed your soul?" They were really hypothetical questions because I already knew the answers. I just didn't know how to break out of such a horrid habit.
So I went to the e-zine where I knew there were classes. I had taken some before and enjoyed them, so my plan was to take one and use it to put myself on a different path. I had taken a course with Melanie before, and trusted her, and one was coming up, so I paid for it and waited for the start date. That was the beginning of a different approach for me. Melanie Faith is a great instructor. She is kind, compassionate, and encouraging. She is one of the most responsive instructors I have ever had and each critique she makes helps me to become better at the craft. At the end of her course, I had renewed my enthusiasm and made a step-by-step plan toward my retirement goal--to write full time.
Enter Margo Dill. Although I love writing flash and personal essays, I noted that Margo was about to offer a middle grade novel course. I had an idea for a novel that had been nagging at me for years. Years!!!! It was based on a childhood game my sister and I played--Daughters of Hercules. The game was in the middle grade age group, so I took a deep breath and signed up. WOW (pun intended). Margo was amazing. She understood right off the bat what was needed to get someone started. Her notes, bite-sized pieces, critiques, encouragement and overall approach made the idea of writing a full book much less daunting. What happened next was amazing. I wrote the whole novel! That is not to say it is anywhere near publishable. But it's on paper. Margo helped me get that far with one course. I set the novel aside to let it percolate.
I went back to your website and put together an integrated approach to getting done what I felt needed to be done. I signed up for another Melanie course in
Flash Fiction to break into the market more fully than I have with short pieces. I signed up for Margo's
Social Networking,
Freelance and
Blogging courses. And one from Bonnie Hearn Hill.
Margo's Social Networking course opened up a whole new world for me. Thanks to her course, again given in manageable pieces, I am now using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and even Jacketflap. She helped me conquer my fear as well as my lack of understanding about how to use these networking tools effectively. Then, her Freelance course. My objective there was to learn how to write a query letter so that I could take pieces from Melanie's course, as well as articles, and have better luck in my submissions. That was when another world completely opened up for me because of Margo's approach and realistic, usable critiques. Next came the Blogging course, which I'm still in. I figured I needed a blog to have something larger to promote myself. Again, due to Margo's style, I have a whole blog with pages and posts, and share buttons and even a picture! I can't express how much additional confidence that has given me. By the end of that course, I won't be a pro, but I'll be pretty good. She even managed to talk me off a ledge when I lost the entire blogging site. She even tried to help me figure out what the webhost had done with it when it changed my server. There isn't anyone else I can think of who would have taken the time to do that.
While in the Blogging course, I was also taking Melanie's Flash Fiction course. Her even, balanced style was the same as ever. And of the five pieces I wrote, four of them are publishable. That's improvement!!!! That's "showing and not telling." That's about precise words and using them. It's about sentence length and structure. In the end, the whole package is about confidence in what I'm doing.
Thrown into this is Bonnie Hearn Hill's course which has taken me back into my novel, and she is teaching me about character development, conflict, and dialogue, which I need more foundation on before I get to the final step of my plan. When I finish with Bonnie's course, I should have 50 pages of the novel that I've straightened out all the characters on, which puts me in the perfect position for Margo's advanced course,
Writing a Middle-Grade Novel II. I am so excited for that.
In the end, Editors, it was really Margo L. Dill and Melanie Faith that put me back at the writer's desk and gave me all the tools I need to really embrace my dream and implement it. So much of that fear that had immobilized me is gone. So much of what I wasn't sure about is diminished.
The two together made the difference for me. And where it not for your classes, I'd still be playing Conceptis.
THANK YOU, WOW.
A forever fan,
Holly Helscher
