writing course – PASS IT ON

Hello again – I’ve not posted anything since June as I’ve not really had anything to say, that is until now.

So since then I’ve put together a writing course to help explain WHY metre matters and HOW metre works when writing in rhyme.

Some of you may have purchased my Rhyme Like the Experts Book and this course is really just an expansion of that along with some added bonuses.

I have been editing adults writing children’s poems and stories in verse for years now and I absolutely love it.

So far I have edited over 300 rhymers and close to 1000 rhymes – that’s amazing!

To read some of their testimonials you can click here.

Over the years I’ve been asked if I run any courses and of course, until now, I hadn’t.

So what do I offer? And what does it cost?

METRE MATTERS is a 30 page PDF that contains everything I’ve learnt over the years and is written in practical and easy to understand language.

It includes examples where I analyse different types of poems written in different metres along with exercises, that once completed, I will give feedback on.

The course guide is really just a jumping off point for discussion and further exploration that will happen when participants dive into the Facebook group that I’ve named The Versealots.

The Versealots is a private group that only course participants will be able to join and along with support I hope also to collect and share publishing opportunities that will encourage lots of submissions and hopefully publications that we will be able to celebrate together.

METRE MATTERS is a self-paced course, there is no beginning and no end. Once you’ve joined in you will be a life member.

Another bonus is that members will enjoy a $10 discount off the hourly rate when utilising my Rhyming Manuscript Editing Service – for life!!

So why do I think I’m qualified to teach you about metre?

Well I guess because it seems to be the only way that I can write. For a quick overview of what I’ve had published you can pop over to my other blog here.

When I first began editing other people’s work I didn’t possess any of the technical language, I’d say things like, this line is a bit lumpy, or, I tripped on this word. To be honest, back in the beginning I didn’t really know exactly what metre was.

As my client base increased I felt that I really should be able to offer better explanations as to why I was making the suggestions that I was and so began my journey of teaching myself the ins and outs of metrical poetry.

Now Einstein once said…..

…..and that’s what I hope I’ve done. Metre is certainly not an exact science and rules must certainly be broken. But before we can break the rules we much first be able to understand them.

But wait there’s more!

Some of you reading this may have received an email from me offering a further discount. This offer applies until the end of August and is for anyone who has used my manuscript editing service in the past including entering my Spring Competitions. If you think you might qualify please in get touch. It’s quite a substantial discount.

Ok that’s about it. Thanks for reading and hopefully I’ll see some of you soon.

Take care and happy rhyming.

Oh and just as a ps – here’s what some Australian publishers had to say when I asked them this question…

What are the most common difficulties that writers in rhyme encounter?

They haven’t got a sense of timing – rhythm or flow.

From a publishing point of view rhyming books do present challenges at the editing stage.

Metre metre metre! So few submissions have pleasing, easy metre. Read your poem aloud. Do you have to work hard to fit your words into your metre? Do you adjust the stress on ANY of the words (i.e. do you say them differently to the way you say them in natural speech)? Rewrite those lines!! I cannot emphasise enough how important metre is to poetry.

They think the rhyme excuses a whole lot of other flaws, including poor rhymes. Rhyming is a subtle and complex art that deserves years of study and then you have to make it work for children and then in a picture book format. You need a great story first and one that works for children, which has a proper beginning, middle and end.

Bad rhythm and forced rhyme. There should be no extra words to get the rhythm to work ‘such as the lion did say” instead of ‘said’ or reversals of words to get the rhyme, ie ‘lion blue’ to rhyme with ‘you’ instead of blue lion. In other words the rhyme has to be very natural. The other thing to bear in mind is that many people don’t have a natural sense of rhythm anyway, and read rhyme and the emphasis on the words differently. The rhyme has to be very consistent to avoid such differences. The other thing I find is that the necessity to rhyme often means that the story goes in different directions when inexperienced writers attempt to write rhyme, so there can be dead spots ion the story or extraneous material (if that makes sense). It is very difficult to get good succinct rhyme which keeps to the storyline. Rhyme that works better is when writers are not trying to write rhyming couplets, but stick to a simple repetitive couplet such as ‘I went walking. What did you see. I saw a red cow looking at me.’ Or ‘Let’s go visiting what do you say. Two black kittens are ready to play.’