OCCRWA Proudly Presents:
May 14 – June 10, 2012
Passive Writing: Do You Really Want to
Send Your Reader into a Coma?
with MM Pollard
About the Class:
This workshop focuses on passive voice, nominalizations, vague -ing words, and weak verbs. These problem areas spell rejection because they rob your writing of energy and clarity. MM Pollard, English teacher extraordinaire, will show you how to fix these fatal errors BEFORE you send your manuscript to an agent or editor.
During this 4-week session, students will receive 12 lessons with practical homework assignments and personal feedback. For each topic, MM will define the problem and the provide techniques for identifying, evaluating and correcting your own work.
And, for those who post all the homework when it’s due, MM Pollard will line edit 1,000 words of their writing for all things English. (She does not edit for story elements like character development or point of view. Those topics she leaves to published authors.)
As one student stated: First I want to thank you for an incredible class. You made grammar so much fun. Your lessons were beautifully laid out. So clear. Because you explained not only what the rule was, but the reason for it, I GOT it and want to write more so that I can apply the lessons.
About the Instructor:
As a line editor for Black Velvet Seductions, MM Pollard has read many entertaining and thought-provoking stories. She has also found some common mistakes in punctuation, grammar, and usage.
Inspired by the saying: “Give a hungry man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he never goes hungry again.” MM conducts workshops for Savvy Authors, Writers Online Classes, Novelists at Work, Orange County Chapter RWA, as well as in her own virtual classroom. Her goal is to teach writers what they need to know about English grammar, usage, and punctuation so that they won’t need an editing service to correct their mistakes in these areas.
An English instructor for fifteen-plus years, MM loves teaching and she loves words. She’s a certifiable language arts geek. One of her hobbies is collecting grammar books. She has always been fascinated by words and by the way we arrange them to tell others about ourselves, about the world around us, and about worlds we create in our heads.
Visit the MM’s Writers’ Blog at http://queenofenglish.wordpress.com.
Enrollment Information
Enrollment for this class has closed.
For a listing of other OCCRWA online classes, please click here.
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Site updated May 19, 2012
