I started February by doing as I had planned, with some odd bits of writing and a good focus on a short story. Then a tweet came in from an acquaintance, with an invitation to join her in taking a MOOC from Coursera: Aboriginal Worldviews and Education. After a quick check, I determined that it was a quality course offered through the University of Toronto and would not offer a challenge financially. The time allotted for the course seemed just manageable, so I signed up.
I usually take a lot more time to think about something before going ahead. Had I thought about it longer, I may have convinced myself that I didn’t have time. Instead, the four weeks following February 25 have reminded me of November, with such an intense focus on one thing. All my spare moments went into the course. I didn’t do any writing other than for the course. I did a lot of reading and a lot of listening, and when I couldn’t do those things, I did a lot of thinking.
I am very glad for having taken the course. It was very well done and I learned a lot. Having been out of any educational setting for at least 20 years, I was glad to be back at focused learning for a while.
One of my main goals in starting my blog was to put myself out there as a writer. It is a way to share my writing journey and in so doing to help myself along in my process. I’m not blogging about actual writing this month, in this belated post, however, I am moving myself along in my process.
I took this course because I see it as research for my next novel. I don’t know exactly how it will contribute, as my story is really still quite a vague idea, but I do know that it will help. Part of my process is learning to trust myself, to trust the internal process that will lead itself to the novel that I NEED to write. So far, I’m finding this to be rather fun.
The plan for my next blog is to put some words to the things I learned while taking the course.