What would you like to learn from me?

I know exactly what this guy would like. Oats! ALL TEH OATZ! But he was sleeping on the job that afternoon, and the gals and the Bambis beat him to it hours earlier. Dig that look he’s giving me through the window. Sorry, pal. You snooze: you lose. The girls got here first. Get used to it.

When my mom is away from her home, I often housesit for her, mostly to make sure the wildlife gets fed. NEVER MIND taking out the garbage or checking the mail, or making it look like someone is in the house, so that the would-be robbers won’t bust in. MUST FEED DEERZ.

And must paint the peanut butter tree. This is a piece of wood my stepdad stuck on a long pole, having dug several round holes out of it. In those holes, we paint a mixture of suet and peanut butter that brings ALL THE BIRDS to the yard. The other day, I was filling in the peanut butter holes while a downy woodpecker perched on top of the peanut butter tree, a foot from my face, and yelled at me to hurry up. “BIPED! WHERE IS MY FOOD?” I was talking to the bird as if it could understand me. “YEESH. Give me a hot second!”

I’m cool with all of that, because I love the wildlife and I love to see all of it. When I’m at mom’s, I sometimes spend hours on the couch that faces the big picture window so that I can see the comings and goings of the deer, the moose, the pileated woodpeckers, the vicious territorial little bastards known as chickadees (which I love! Don’t @ me!), the sparrows, the nuthatches, the grosbeaks, and the downy woodpeckers.

I hate the squirrels and routinely chase them off. Magpies? Don’t get me started. Let’s just say I keep a rolled up Walmart flier handy to bash on the window to make them understand they’re not welcome. Once in a while, the odd Mr. Bunny will venture onto the deck looking for carrot shavings, and the bumbling porcupines are a selling feature. When they die under the deck, YOU KNOW ABOUT IT. As Hamlet said of the dead Polonius, “you shall nose him as you go upstairs into the lobby.”

If you read my blog or know anything about me, you know that Sheriff Woody goes most places with me. I routinely toss him into whatever bag I’m packing and prop him up somewhere. He and I had a wonderful quiet time at mom’s. He’s remarkably low maintenance. He doesn’t need to be fed or entertained. I know what he likes: to look at nature, wherever I am.

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Which got me to thinking. I offer an e-course on editing your own work. I’m really happy with it, it’s doing well, and the feedback has been universally positive. It’s geared toward emerging fiction and non-fiction writers and targets the challenges we all face as writers just starting out (or well into our writing lives).

I was awake early this morning and stared at the ceiling for a while. It wasn’t wasted time as I was thinking about other courses I could offer.

What would you like to see in a writing or editing course that you think I could offer you? Memoir? Publishing in Canada? A mini-class on self-editing you could do in an afternoon? I’m open to your ideas. I have big plans for lots of courses, but I’d love to hear what you might like. Let me know in the comments or send me a note at my contact page.