by Leona Pence and Kristena Mears

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a writer? Do you have a dream, but don’t know where to go from there?
Or, maybe you have a friend or family member who has this goal. They’ve even written a manuscript and now need to polish it so it’s ready for print.

F2K (Fiction for 2000) is the place for you. Here you can work with other writers, learn new skills or fine-tune your work, reading it to be published.

Don’t take my word for it. With us today is Leona Pence. She has worked with F2K for a number of years. Today she’s going to tell us about her experience and how you can take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.

If anyone is interested in taking this wonderful course, feel free to contact either Leona or me, or follow the link at the end of this post. We would love to have you join this amazing opportunity.

And here, in her own words, is Leona speaking about F2K

My F2K Experience

by Leona Pence

               Way back in 2009, I’d never heard of F2K. When I did, it changed my life. I  had lost my husband to lung cancer in 2006, and to save my sanity, I started emailing penpals and chatting with friends online. Because of a few of them, I wrote a manuscript but really had no idea what to do with it.  I saw an ad for Writing Forums that would allow you to have one chapter at a time critiqued. I signed up there, but I thought most of the writers were way ahead of me.

One day an administrator named Foxie told me about F2K, a free basic creative writing course. She felt it would help me. I checked out the site and went back and told her I was too old and had been out of school far too long. She said,’ Don’t you dare use age as an excuse. It’s free! What have you got to lose?’  So, I hung my head and signed up for the course. The door that had closed from my husband’s death had now opened up the online world for me.

I liked the course so well that I signed on for it four times. I met writers, both beginners and published authors from all over the world. I had just started the fourth course when a room mentor had to step down and I was kind of drafted to take her place. I continued as a room mentor for almost six years. I loved the weekly chats which gave people the opportunity to meet and chat with peers from other rooms.  Ironically. A few years later, Foxie ended up being a student in my classroom.

F2K consists of six structured lessons given at one per week. It gives one time to post there work and give feedback to their peers. Feedback, also known as constructive criticism, is extremely important to the learning process. In my first course, my feedback was one-liners like, ‘good job’ or ‘I enjoyed your post’. That type of comment didn’t help me or the poster. I was way too shy to go to the other rooms to read or give feedback.

By the time I’d finished round three, I was confident enough to give feedback in all the eight rooms. F2K gave me the confidence I never knew I had. With each session, I came away with a 1500 word short story utilizing what I had learned.

As a mentor,  my room was the Madeleine L’Engle Room. All the rooms were named for an important author.  F2k has evolved quite a bit since I mentored. It is now on the Writers’ Village University site and is listed as a course on the calendar. There aren’t as many rooms, and each mentor has an intern who helps give feedback and can step in if the mentor has to be away.

The next F2K session will start on September 18^th, 2019. Since it is a part of WVU, a $10 fee will allow you to join WVU for three months and F2K will then be a free class, One can roam the halls and check out the classes and courses available. Trust me, you won’t regret it. At this time there is no set date announced yet for the F2K discount but it is usually about 10 days before the start date. Kristena and I can both share the link on here and Facebook as soon as it is available.

Course Description: F2K is a beginning creative writing course, though experienced writers often repeat the course as a refresher and for inspiration. The classes are facilitated by experienced volunteers from Writers’ Village University.

Students will be assigned classrooms on the first day of class. All classrooms are in the F2K Forum, and are named after authors. For example, you might be assigned to the Hemingway Classroom. Check Lee’s Cafe to find out which classroom you’ve been assigned to.

Once you’ve registered, post a greeting in Lee’s Cafe.

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