I have an antipathy for words like “awareness” and “inspirational”.

They are grossly overused and people seem compelled these days to make us “aware” of something that everyone knows about, or to “inspire” us to do something or other that we have no inclination to do.

Having said that, I am loath to say I was “inspired” last night. Maybe a better word would be “reminded” or even “nudged”?

What happened was that I read a piece by Magnum Lady [who apparently follows a band called Magnum and has nothing to do with ice-creams]. It reminded me that there are free courses available on-line on our library sites for just about everything under the sun. A couple of years ago I did one of the courses for the laugh [Wordpress!] and it was a little bit of a challenge. [I passed, if anyone is interested.]

So last night I dipped back into it to have a look and see if there was anything interesting. The choice is somewhat bewildering as there are courses under a range of topic from Accounting to Writing Skills. There are literally hundreds of courses on just about any topic.

I went into Writing Skills out of interest. There were 53 courses in there. I worked my way through the long list and discarded such topics as Advertising and Humor Writing [yes – they spelled it incorrectly which is unforgivable on a library site] and found two that might be interesting – Creative Writing [for beginners] and Novel Writing. The first one has 15 lessons and 32 exams and assignments while the second has 26 lessons and 56 exams and assignments.

So it’s a toss-up between those two. Novel Writing sort of appeals but 56 fucking exams and assignments? Do I have the patience? Is it going to restart that niggling urge to write a book?

Fuck inspiration!