[MUSIC] Welcome to week seven, the final version of your story, and where to go from here. Writing is a craft that you can keep on working on for the rest of your life. Now that you've gotten that head of steam, after taking all of these courses, you probably don't want it to lapse. I certainly hope that you don't. Momentum is everything. So, I thought it might be useful to discuss some ways you might formalize your practice to keep growing as a writer. Let's put aside that romantic idea that writers need no company or that writing happens only when people are all alone and they benefit not at all from other people's advise or encouragement. Consider the analogy with other forms of art, music, with sports, with anything really that you're trying to learn over a period of time. The advice and solidarity of another group of people also engaged in the process that you're engaged in can be really invaluable. The key thing is that it's hard to keep doing something like this if it's divorced from the rest of your life. So, here's some things that people do to keep their momentum going. Some of you might have the advantage of going to an under graduate institution or you've been to a graduate program where this in the United States you can get a master's degree in fine arts. This is usually a two or a three year degree completely devoted to honing the craft of creative writing. Different kinds of programs exist all over the world. In the United States, there's such a thing as a Low Residential MFA Program where people, rather than living in a particular town or on campus at a university. Work at home, work with a mentor over correspondence, and then periodically travel to a university for a condensed period of coursework. But that's by no means the only way to do this. You might want to go on working with a small cohort of people you've assembled either through correspondents, friends at a distance or people in your local community. The great advantage of having a long term group of readers is I think that they get to know your language, they can reflect on your strengths and growth over time. But, how do you meet such people? Well, this leads to the next couple of possibilities. You might entertain the idea of enrolling in a short workshop program. These can be as short as one day, a couple of hours, or a week or two weeks. You might also consider enrolling in a writer's conference. These are often five days or a week long where writers get together to take short master classes, to participate in panels, to go to readings and most crucially, to get to know other writers. You can really form strong bonds with people very quickly. And have the benefit of those people's advice over the long term. Later on in this module we'll talk with Anne Green who has for a long time directed the Western Univeristy writer's conference and ask her a couple of questions about workshops, conferences and what attracts students to them and what they get out of them. [MUSIC]
