Wednesday 9 July 2008

Le chien qui fume

"The smoking dog" would be a great opening to a chapter of a book. All this week I have morning classes in how to write Creative Non-Fiction. I chose this class with the intention of eventually doing something with all the journals Mick and I wrote in the USA. We are 5 in the class; Charles (host of last night's soirĂ©e and retired business man who has set up a Salon des hommes in Paris), Susan (an Australian business journalist), Jane (a Tanzanian/British professor of English at the University of Barbados), Min (a scientific writer based in Paris and Switzerland) and me (a photographer and graphic designer). 

Lessons learned today from Kevin Jackson, our teacher, are: identify your audience, how to capture your audience, thinking about structure and the importance of planning and how to test your prose through reading it aloud.

You can see why we (the 4 females) deserved lunch. In the restaurant we met Geoff (pictured), a travel writer based in Barcelona and all decided to attend his talk later in the afternoon.

Geoff told of the importance of reading around the subject you are writing about. Non-fiction writing involves extensive reading before you start.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, so I got to this blog by accident. I had an assessment from English, which was to write a blog. Mine was ontheothersideofparis.blogspot.com. :D Sounds similar? Yes, it is. But the context is very different. I liked your blog, it is very genuine, very personal and sweet. Paris is really a city of art and if you ignore some things I was writing about, you are just fine. And I especially liked that part with taxi-driver. I was there twice, and I must admit, they are really easy-going, though I did not know that to such an extend. Carry on writing, it is an interesting read :D