A Writing Instructor's Musings

by Kris

I'll be repeating my popular online mystery writing course, Committing the Perfect Crime: Writing Your First Mystery, in April for the UCLA Extension School's Writers' Program. Online courses are tough to create. All good instructors plan their courses, naturally, but in classroom situations, they don't have to write every word of every lecture. Nor proofread them until they're perfect. But that's how online courses work. Proofing online course material is like proofing a novel — mistakes seem to creep in while you sleep.

On the upside, once an online course is finalized, the theory goes, the teacher doesn't have to revisit that work again, and can simply offer up those lectures to new students without having to put in any extra work. For the lecture part of the course, anyway; assignment feedback and questions from students work pretty much like classroom situations, except that they're typed.

But I like to review my courses before I offer them again, as I recently did for my April class. I look at the lectures to see if I can better clarify areas that I know have plagued some students in the past. I add new assignments, take others out, and come up with new ways this round of students can attack certain challenges.

As I reviewed my course, it struck me anew how much this class requires students to cover, and by extension, how much new mystery writers need to learn. And these are just the basics — they'll have to deepen their knowledge of all of this material as they go on. It also struck me what an act of faith and hope it is whenever anyone sets out to learn a new discipline.

While everyone who is published today made it over that hump — most take the abilities they developed for granted now, and have largely forgotten the growing pains they must have suffered along the way. I've never had kids, but I've heard women forget the pain of childbirth the same way.

While I've always been told I'm a compassionate instructor, nothing has brought back the difficulty of the journey, and the emotional ups-and-downs, like the art classes I've taken occasionally in recent years. They're closer in time, and in memory, than learning to write. And I'm still very much a newbie artist. Granted, they're not precisely the same. The process of learning art contains a physical component. It's  hard to get pencils and fingers and brushes move in a way that will allow what appears on the paper or canvas to approximate that vague image in the artist's head. But while a writing student's fingers merely have to hit the right keys on the keyboard, the student's inability to paint as effective a word picture as she longs to, can feel quite similar. And just as frustrating when it won't happen.

Those times when I took art classes while teaching writing classes caused me to observe the struggle from both sides. I remember nights of dragging myself to art class, and confessing to my teacher that I felt hopelessly inept, forcing him to be as much a therapist as an instructor — even as I gave the same pep talks to writing students pained by their slow progress. I also remember the smug smile my art teacher would flash at times, because he could see the progress I was making when I could not, I suspect — while I enjoyed that same satisfaction with my writing students. Every experienced teacher observes when students are making big leaps, or starting to grow at faster rates, before the students make those discoveries themselves.

So…I keep experiencing both sides of that leap of faith and hope. Although this course is billed as "Writing Your First Mystery," it actually attracts a range of students, some newbies, some intermediates, and even some who've been published, not to mention thriller writers, and even some literary writers, at every stage as well. Most of the published members of the class have come to the mystery from other genres, and just need to shore up some of their mystery conventions and skills. I welcome them, of course. But it's the newbies and the intermediates for whom I bring my strongest wishes. So that they can make the progress I know they're capable of, even if they don't know it. To keep their faith and hope alive.

Comments

[Ryan]

I took the "Writing Your First Mystery" course with you a few years ago, Kris, and I really appreciate all the preparation you put into the lectures and the constructive feedback you provided along the way.

I've had to put my "fun" writing on hold to finish my dissertation, but I've kept (and still review) your handouts and lectures. Hope you teach the advanced mystery writing class soon. I want to enroll!

[Kris Neri]

Hi, Ryan! Good to hear from you. Finish your dissertation so you can get back to the fun! I have created a workshop style class, which works for writers of all levels with a WIP, but I've only taught it once, and I don't know when they'll want it again. They don't give us a much notice on classes, only scheduling one quarter's catalog ahead. But I'm sure we'll offer it again at some point. Let's hope that coincides with your taking up your mystery again. Stay in touch once you do -- I'd love to hear how it's going. And much luck with the dissertation, too.