A Quote by Leila Aboulela

I started creative writing classes at Aberdeen Central Library, and the writer-in-residence there, Todd McEwen, encouraged me a great deal. He showed my stories to his editor, and I thought that was just what happened to everyone who took his classes!
I think that when I was child, acting was mostly just a hobby for me. It was something that my parents encouraged me to think of the way that my brothers thought of their cross-country classes, or my little sister to dance classes and art classes, and it was something like that for me.
I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn't feel particularly lucky.
After finishing my undergraduate work at the University of Iowa, where I took creative writing classes taught by Writer's Workshop students, I applied to half a dozen MFA writing programs.
I've taken every writing class I've had available. I took classes in high school, and I took English and writing classes in community college, but I dropped out of college. I also attended a local writing workshop two years ago.
While I wasn't very good at much else in school, in my creative-writing classes or when we had to do some writing in my English classes, I tended to do better at it.
I started writing the book without realizing I was writing a book. That sounds stupid, but it's true. I'd been trying and failing to make a different manuscript work, and I thought I was just taking a break by writing some short stories. I'm not a very good short story writer - the amazing compression that is required for short stories doesn't come easily to me. But anyway, I thought I'd try to write some short stories. And a structure took shape - I stumbled upon it.
When I was 4, my parents took me to see a musical, and I was like, 'I want to do that!' I started doing all sorts of musical camps and a lot of professional theater. I took dance classes for 10 years, too - I was never the most amazing kid in the other classes, but tap stuck with me for some reason.
I was really grateful for the photography classes, the art classes, and the video classes. They would let me skip all my other classes and stay and work on my projects.
I explored the arts in general; I took painting classes and sketching classes and acting classes and all sorts of different things.
I was a journalism major, and I would take creative writing classes as part of that, but I would also look for opportunities to write stories for some of my other classes. So for my course in Scandinavian history, I asked if I could write historical fiction instead of term papers. Sometimes they’d say yes.
I think I told my parents I wanted to be a writer, just so they'd kind of think I had some direction in life. It made it easier to pick out classes at college, like, 'Oh, this is writing classes, that's what I'm doing.'
If you don't take enough math classes or science classes or writing intensive classes, you're not going to be prepared to compete in college or the workplace -- no matter what your diploma says.
I wasn't all that attracted to writing originally. I read a great deal. My parents read a great deal. I do know that as my interest in tennis waned, my interest in academics increased. I mean, I started doing my homework in high school and discovering that it was somewhat fun. And then in college I barely even played on the team because just classes were much more interesting.
TODD!" I yell again and I reach him and his Noise opens even farther and wraps around me like a blanket and I'm grabbing him to me, grabbing him to me like I'll never let him go and he calls out in pain but his other arm is grabbing me back - "I thought you were dead," he's saying, his breath on my neck. "I thought you were dead." "Todd," I say and I'm crying and the only thing I can say is his name. "Todd.
Growing up as a kid, I took creative writing classes, and I was always into poetry.
I was a 'learn by doing' writer - I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice.
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