This year as part of my graduate program at UBC, I took a class on teaching creative writing. In that class, we were asked to come up with a dream syllabus for a course we would love to teach -- a syllabus without restrictions on what we thought was important. For me, it was a chance to create a course I would have loved to have taken as a beginning writer.

Also this year, I did a short teaching practicum at UBC's Learning Exchange in downtown Vancouver (I taught a course in revision). I had a great time, the writers were terrific, but in the end we all agreed that my practicum wan't long enough. I wanted to teach more and the writers taking my class wanted to learn more.

Well, something good has happened to help us both out: I've been invited to return to the Learning Exchange. And, here's the best part, guess what I'm teaching. Yup, that's right, my dream syllabus. The class I'm teaching now is a twelve week course that takes writers from a blank page and goes through the entire creative process from idea generation through revision and finally to submission for publication. At the end, the writers taking my course will have a completed and polished short story, as well as an understanding of what it takes to craft fiction. Everyone is interested (and interesting) and I think we're going to have a lot of fun.