7. The course title. Be sure it accurately reflects course content. One of my early course was titled “The Historical Novel: A Writing Workshop.” I like poets and essayists and playwrights just fine, but this course wasn’t for them!

8. The course description. Catalog copy generally runs tight. Try to describe your course in no more than 75-100 words; be prepared to cut this description even further. View samples from previous catalogs or listings to get a sense of institution or program’s editorial style. Be direct about purpose/goal of course.

For example, here’s a description for historical novel workshop mentioned above:

"This workshop is for writers of historical novels. Through tailored writing exercises and discussion of selected texts, course will address issues of particular challenge to historical novelists: use of ‘real’ characters, setting, and tensions between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction.’ Primary focus, however, will be on critiques of students’ work."

9. Prerequisites (if applicable). A line such as: "Students must submit a one-page synopsis and five pages of their work-in-progress" signals from start that only writers particularly committed to their work should enroll.

10. Schedule of meetings and reading/writing assignments. This doesn't necessarily have to be set in stone, but you'll acquire--and convey--a better sense of your own course if you think ahead to class meetings and to how you will be making use of each. One writing program director once advised me that prospective students tended to respond favorably to having some mention of authors they’d be reading for a course within description, so it can make sense to provide same information, in even greater detail, for “authorities,” too.

Once you are preparing actual syllabus for a course, you'll want to delineate additional policies. Depending on class/institution, you may need to think about grading policies. And a writing workshop benefits from a set of critique guidelines everyone understands from start.

But don't worry too much about that. Yet. Start with proposal, and add that to your writing practice.

© Copyright 2004 Erika Dreifus. All rights reserved. Article reprint permission is granted provided that entire article--including About Author information--remains intact and unaltered. Please send a courtesy copy of reprint to erikadrei@yahoo.com .

The same goes for bashing. If someone is bashing your work don’t fret. This kind of thing happens all time. Most of them just want to get under your skin to see if they can or not.

When someone bashes your work it either means they don’t care about it or they are too immature and can’t help you out anyway. So just move on and wait until someone comes along and gives better advice.

Constructive criticism is only thing you need to listen to. Just be sure to not take it wrong way. Listen to it and take suggestions on how to better your work. Do not let all other stuff people say bother you. This is your work and you wrote it for yourself.

Take it easy and do what you think is right, but don’t ever quit writing!