
Welcome to the introduction to Write Your Why: 7 Days of Self-Discovery Through Writing! In this video, meet your teacher, Amy Becker, find out why she developed this course, and get a sense of what you can expect along the way.
This lesson encourages students to begin their own diaries. It includes insightful analysis of the etymologies of the words "diary" and "journal" and offers some philosophical as well as practical suggestions to help students along the way.
This lesson identifies the differences between a memoir and a diary or journal. It introduces and explains the technique of mind mapping, and it facilitates students' development of a memory (or group of memories) from their own lives.
This lesson teaches how to write an informative and evaluative review of a subject of the student's own choosing. It focuses on structure as well as content and offers a highly detailed example.
This lesson shares the basic history of letters to editors and discusses the personal and public significance of this type of writing. It also guides students in using effective structure and persuasive techniques.
This lesson guides students in detail through the history and their own creation of one of the most common and popular forms of poetry: the haiku. It also discusses six other types of poetry: cinquain, limerick, naani, nonet, acrostic, and free verse.
Redaction refers to the act of blacking out words from a text, typically with the intent to conceal meaning. This lesson shows, however, that redaction can also be used to reveal meaning. Blackout poetry is presented as an example.
This lesson discusses basic theatre history and leads into the general elements involved in modern script writing. Students will write at least one complete scene, focusing on either a real or imagined scene from their life.
This is almost the end of the course! Before you go, please remember to choose any one piece of writing (or up to three of your poems) that you've completed and send it to me for my detailed feedback. You can do this in the assignment portion of this section.
Thank you for choosing Write Your Why: 7 Days of Self-Discovery Through Writing! If you enjoyed it, please tell a friend. If you see something that needs improvement, please direct message me.
I hope to work with you again another day! Bye for now.
Hi there! My name is Amy. I've been a writer and a writing tutor/teacher for many years, and I recently developed my first online course with my dad in mind. My dad was never a writer, and wasn't a big reader either, but when he was around 70, he decided to start writing his memories. My family was thrilled!
Before long, though, he stopped, and he even deleted everything he'd already written. When I asked him why, he said, "Oh, who wants to read all that old stuff anyway?" Well, I did. My family did. We'd have kept it and treasured it and gotten to know and understand new parts of him and his family and his life. He never went back to it, and now he's gone.
I think there may be more people out there like him, who don't consider themselves to be writers and who don't have much experience or confidence, but who feel inspired to start for some reason.
Maybe you're one of those people?
Write Your Why: 7 Days of Self-Discovery Through Writing consists of seven lessons covering seven types of writing (diary, memoir, review, letter to an editor, poetry, redaction, and script), and the idea is to help you start writing and show yourself and others why you are the amazing and unique person you are.
Each lesson has a video presentation narrated by me and a downloadable worksheet with a recap of each lesson, an assignment, writing prompts, and a carefully curated list of additional resources. You will also receive detailed feedback from me on any one piece of writing you complete during the course.