So, You Want to Write a Novel?

Earlier this year, I announced in a blog post that I’d started a novel writing course. It was through The University of Michigan, affiliated with Coursera, and was to be a 26-week, mostly self-guided class. While I’ve had ambitions to write and eventually put out a novel as far back as childhood, I never had the motivation prior. But now, with a course on tap and lots of free time on my hands, I figured I’d make good on that. So how was it?

It was good…with some reservations.

I’ll start with the positives. For one, the course was pretty straightforward. It was divided up into 26 weeks, which were then sub-divided into a lecture and an assignment. The lectures consisted of 1-5 minute videos where my professor, a screenwriter named David Wheeler, would discuss the intricacies of writing, explain my assignment and give clear instructions about the lesson at hand. He also had a really lulling voice, perfect for anyone willing to cure their insomnia.

Following each lecture, as I said earlier, was an assignment with a template: write the assignment, usually a chapter, post it and review 5 of your peers’ works in order to move on. This was mandatory for completing the course, which was a pass/fail with no in-between. It was the meat and potatoes, but it gave me a chance to track my classmates and see what they were up to. It was frustrating waiting for them to catch up at times, but the end result was often really rewarding.

I think this made the class that much more exciting. Because the 20 chapters had to be posted separately, it made the writing feel episodic. Want to know if the character in a suspense thriller survived? Find out next time. Wondering if she made out with him before their wedding? Again, find out next time. Curious what happens next? You get the picture.

This, when coupled with a forum for individual concerns, was brilliant. Giving feedback in general is hard, doubly-so without an incentive. Far too often people weasel out of giving feedback if they don’t want to. So having a course that required it as part of its mandate, though sometimes stressful, was a nice way to incorporate that. It made getting feedback from classmates addicting.

But it also kept me much more invested. The prof generally preferred a “500 words a day” regiment, so as to keep from losing pace. But I constantly bucked that, opting for a full, 2500 word count in one sitting. It allowed me to complete a single chapter in 2-4 hours, unintentionally depriving me of a bathroom break, dinner, or, worst-case scenario, sleep. It also allowed for many typos and grammatical errors, which wasn’t helped by not being able to fix them when I posted my assignments. Oops!

If I have one critique of this course, it’s the Table Reads. Every 7 chapters, or every individual act break, I was required to gather some friends and have them read the individual parts in a group setting. I hated these assignments, despite there only being three of them in total. Not only was finding people tedious, but arranging times to read the book aloud was even more so. It didn’t help when one or two people were in another time zone, as I’d have to arrange around their schedules. I still pulled it off, but couldn’t my classmates have sufficed for this?

I ended up dividing the sessions into two, one-hour blocks of time and recording the voices to listen to later on. This, obviously, required written consents from all parties, which was also tedious to coordinate, but they allowed for feedback loops to listen to should I need them. They also required me to upgrade my Zoom account, which costed me extra, but it was worth it.

Following the Table Reads, and this was of my own volition, I enlisted my grandfather, a man with no real interest in science-fiction, to help me edit my writing and make it flow better. Initially, my book was slightly over 50000 words, in keeping with the course’s requirements. However, not everything I wrote meshed together, so the book shrank by close to 1000 words. I know that technically broke the 50000-word rule, but I think it flows better now. I only wish some of my best jokes had survived the edit, even though my grandfather ended up liking my work.

Once that was done, I encountered another problem: the completed manuscript wouldn’t upload. It turned out I wasn’t alone on that, so I linked a Google Doc instead and apologized to my class for that. It wasn’t technically breaking the rules, I was still sharing the completed product, but it felt like a cop-out. Still, at least it got done.

Would I recommend this course? I suppose. Much like the “Should I got to film school?” question that gets floated around, it depends on what you want from writing. If you feel like it’s worth flexing your creative muscles, then I guess it’s worth a shot. Besides, my prof gave me a copyright symbol for no extra cost, and you’re not wasting money on an expensive degree that won’t get you your dream career. 

I only wish those Table Read weren’t so annoying. But hey, what can you do? The course was free, so I can’t complain about that! (Also, it’s the only course I’ve taken where I’ve received a 100% final grade, so…)