In America it's the fashion to take writing courses such as the ones at Iowa Writers' Center, where I have

never been, I took courses closer to home and even those I have stopped for years now--due to the expense and I didn't want to go out at night on the subway and deserted streets anymore.

The 3-4 writing groups I helped to form fell apart when we could not keep up the "submit one chapter every week" rule we set ourselves, I because I traveled to SE Asia with work every 2 months between 2002 and 2010--

It's rude to say it, but you learn to write by reading.

My American classmates did not get it and few wrote well.

But I have been reading and writing since the time I was 10 to 12, though at that time I had little to write about, I hadn't lived enough, and then it got too traumatic.

Anyway, you will find some of it in my fiction and/or poetry--but you will always need to guess what really happened and which one of my characters is me--

Also, I like to write as a man, and the female characters are not all me--but who cares. <

They are just who they say they are.