We hear the term "life long learner" a lot these days, so when school started back in September I decided to enrol in a course at Sheridan College just to keep myself learning. Sheridan has an excellent reputation for their animation courses and although I would have liked to do a course in 3D animation, they are very difficult to get into, not to mention quite expensive.

Instead, I thought it might be interesting to do something a little different and not computer related, so I enrolled in a course called "Writing a Novel". The lecturer was a very nice lady called Lynda Simmons, a published author with several novels to her name. She was a terrific teacher, and gave us lots of great strategies and insights into the writing process, as well as a lot of tips and tricks for getting published.

Although I started to write the first couple of chapters, I must admit that I didn't give it as much focus as I should have, and I lost interest in the story that I originally began to write. I also took a couple of weeks out when Natalie was here, so I can't claim to have made any real progress into writing the "great Australian novel", but I still found the course very interesting and informative and gave me a lot of useful ideas for writing and storytelling... all of which will come in handy in some form I'm sure.

Funnily enough, I had a sudden flurry of ideas for storylines as the course drew to a close, so I'm sure I will put Lynda's advice to good use at some point in the future.

On Wednesday night all the participants of the course went out for a final dinner at the local Eastside Mario's restaurant. They were a nice bunch of people, and I will miss our little Wednesday evening get-togethers to discuss the developments of our novels over the previous week. The group has decided to form a regular critiquing session, and I'm glad to hear that they will be continuing to develop their novels... I'll look forward to reading them some day!

For what it's worth, here's a paragraph from some of the stuff I wrote...

The 341 bus from Balmain to Petersham passed around the shore of Blackwattle Bay before turning up the hill towards Stanmore, crossing over Parramatta Road and then winding its way through the backstreets of Leichhardt and its large Italian population. Elizabeth was always fascinated by Leichhardt. There were always children playing football on the streets and old men playing chess in the park. On the days when she had a late class and had to catch the 5:30 bus, she could usually smell the deliciously rich aromas of Italian cooking as the bus trundled down Norton Street.