Day 54: Listen to a podcast about something that interests you.

(Fictional worlds here I come.)

Well technically it's not a podcast, it's a university course that was being filmed for the whole semester, but I could download just the audio and listen to it like a podcast if I wanted to. But of course I don't want to do that, too much work.

I can't recall exactly what made me stumble upon this course, but one day I just found myself absolutelly captivated by it. And then several other days, because it's a uni course, so it's long, okay.

Brandon Sanderson, one of the biggest and greatest fantasy writers of this time - and one I haven't read yet shame on me - is teaching a creative writing course and his 2012 and 2013 lectures are all filmed and put up online on youtube and gathered on this site with some more resources and blog posts and other useful stuff that I haven't even checked out yet - http://www.writeaboutdragons.com/.

(And this is the complete list of all the lectures and alike, if you're interested: http://www.writeaboutdragons.com/brandon_w2012/ .)

So you see, it's quite easy to understand why I am so happy about this thing. It's a free uni course made available to the world so other people and - aspiring *cough cough* - writers can learn from it and make their work better. And I just flew through the 2012 course in a bunch of days and I have learnt so, so much just by listening. And yes I do watch lectures and interviews with writers I don't even read (yet) quite often, because there's always something to learn. Or new to discover.

But I am well aware that my listening skills will never make me a good writer. And because I am not brave enough to try out the website functions and I don't feel like I am able to write fiction fully in English (yet?) anyway, I decided to develop a sort of a writing challenge for me:

For every thousand words I write for my first draft on that one thing I've been recently working on, I can watch a new lecture. And so far I am doing great. I could be doing way better, but as always I got held up by other worries of my crazy life and sometimes there was just absolutely no time to write. But I am writing more often and actually trying to get better and work on myself. I also stopped believing that I will ever publish anything - I just want to write. I know I want to. So a make myself sit the fuck down every fucking day and do it.

Thanks Brandon! :)