Thursday 8 July 2010

Summer school and autumn courses

Those who follow me on facebook will know I've been having a pig of a time this week updating my website. I needed to put the full course details up for my two courses, Making Memorable Scenes on the 2nd October and Shape Up and Make Your Pitch on the 16th October. Easy-peasy, you might say. Not. I decided to make a new page on the site for the venue for the courses - had terrible trouble with photo-layout: I'm not good at this. Then lost the lot when the internet went down, just as I was about to upload (isn't it always when you're just about to upload?). Tried again the next day - got the page up, but the photos sit in positions which do not equate to how they looked when creating the page, so I'm still not entirely happy with it and will have to have another go. Yesterday I found that by creating the new page, none of the internal links worked properly - had to laboriously go through every page undoing and re-doing the links.

I should have spent today lying down in a darkened room. However, I start teaching on the University's summer school programme on Saturday so am preparing for that. A very intensive week lies ahead but I enjoy it a lot because I've met such a wide variety of interesting people, from all over the world - people with loads of enthusiasm and commitment. This will be my ninth year of teaching this - it's a course that squeezes all the elements of novel-writing into a week. Students also particularly value the two individual tutorials they have during the week: they send an assignment in beforehand and do another during the course. The tutorials are mini-editorial meetings and it's very fulfilling to see people take away advice and suggestions and put them into practice. Some students make enormous progress in a few days and are able to analyse their own work more effectively and make use of new techniques and awareness. Quite a few have kept in touch with me long after the course is done, and this is so rewarding.

So, the website photos will have to wait a while ...

3 comments:

Glynis Peters said...

Your website is looking good.:) Do not talk to me about computers. My software failed to backup 25,000 words. The last few chapters that were due to be added to a disc, and only written in scrap note form, no body to them.
I am fighting back though, and am 10,000 short of the 80,000 I had.

Lorna F said...

Hi Glynis - thanks for the kind words about the website! Deepest sympathies on the loss of your work - I think all of us go 'ouch' at the sound of that. Good on you for fighting back and good luck with the last 10,000 words.

Jean said...

Hi Lorna, your website looks great. I don't even have the courage or whatever else it takes to try setting one up. I just know I'd end up tearing my hair out.