When people ask me if you need a formal writing education in order to be a writer, I say no. Absolutely not. You can educate yourself by writing, reading, and taking classes.
I’m always taking classes. In fact, each year, I spend more on education than any other part of my business. In part because taking other people’s classes helps me learn more about what works in the classes I create. Mostly, though, the more I learn, the better equipped I become to write, publish, and run a business supporting other writers.
The courses I’ve taken have helped me develop my writing, improve my craft, hone my business skills, and shape how I spend my time, what I write, and even the kind of person I want to be. Along the way, some of the course creators have become mentors and friends.
Here is a list of classes I’ve taken and what I learned from them. Not all are specifically writing education, although all have helped my writing and business. They range in price from thousands of dollars to free, and each has had a significant impact on the way I work and live my life.
altMBA
altMBA is an alternative business education brought to you by Seth Godin. This month-long sprint of a class throws you right into the deep end with marketing, business processes, and finding your branding. Each week you meet with your learning group. Each week your learning group changes, so you have the opportunity to meet and work with a wide variety of people in all different fields and expertise.
Each week there are new projects designed to teach you various lessons. And with each, you create your project — usually written but they also often branched into art, photography, business model design, and many other areas. You present your project to your group. They respond as you respond to other people’s responses. Then you respond to the feedback.
I felt out of my depth for much of it because many of the people in my group were marketing or business professionals.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: The incredible power of feedback. It’s not always easy to hear feedback, but without it, you’re working in a vacuum. Whether writing books and articles or selling a product, you need people who will honestly share their ideas so you can do your best work.
I also learned the best way to build a marketing funnel is to be authentic in your message. The people you want to serve will find you and want more of what you have to say.
Plan Your Writing Roadmap (This one is free.)
This free course walks you through the process of creating your ideal writing life. It’s based on my book The Writer’s Roadmap: Paving the Way To Your Ideal Writing Life and is the first step of my online writing community, The Workshop. Through a series of five emails, I walk you through figuring out exactly what you want in your writing life, your goals, your core values and help you create a plan.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: You can’t get where you’re going if you don’t know your destination. This course helps you figure out where you want to go.
RESET
RESET, created by Jocelyn Glei, teaches you to take a pause from the hectic pace of our work lives and creating boundaries and a sense of control for ourselves. In this way, we do our best deepest most creative work with true value but we also can enjoy our work and lives to a greater degree plus find greater success.
That sounds like a lot for a course to deliver, but it does.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: I set clear boundaries around my work life. Since taking the course I spend no more than 30 minutes a day on social media, all of which are work-related. I set aside specific times a day for my deepest most meaningful work, and I don’t let anything get in the way.
Within six months of taking RESET course, I finished two books and developed two courses. So while RESET didn’t focus specifically on wriitng education, it showed me practical ways to carve out the space I needed to write.
The Workshop
The Workshop is the online community I created for writers to set goals for their writing lives and then make it happen. It’s based on over a decade of using this specific method for my own writing and work plus working with writers one-on-one. The first step in The Workshop is to make a plan for your writing life as I’ve outlined in my book The Writers Roadmap: Paving the Way To Your Ideal Writing Life.
In The Workshop, you not only receive your very own copy of the book, but you have ongoing support as you set up your plan and begin to implement it. You’ll receive regular accountability plus support as you learn new skills. Plus you’ll have a group of like-minded people to cheer you on as you face your fears and do things you didn’t think were possible. (It’s all possible.)
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: It’s easy to lose patience with yourself. But creating your ideal writing life requires consistent effort. I’ve learned that people often give up too quickly. We tend not to give ourselves enough credit for what we’ve done well and we don’t celebrate our wins nearly enough. We also need to hold ourselves accountable for the process of learning what you don’t know and facing the inevitable challenges that go along with writing for a living. The Workshop helps you do all these things.
LitReactor Young Adult Course
This class changed the course of my writing. I wrote a book during NaNoWriMo 2016 mainly because I wanted to test a Five-Step Cheat Sheet To Write Your Fiction Book I’d developed. I took an idea I had for a book and spent the month writing it. At the end of the month, I talked to my daughter about it. She loved it.
“Mom, you have to write this book.”
So I decided then and there I would, but I didn’t know much about YA. That’s why I signed up for this course with Dawn Ius and Mandy Hubbard. Dawn is a multi-faceted writer, screenwriter, coach, and is the managing editor of The Big Thrill. Mandy is a published YA author as well as an agent for other YA authors.
They were wonderful, knowledgeable, and insightful. They guided us as we learned to understand the YA genre, write our first chapters, and write a query letter to an agent. The course is well designed and gives a solid overview of writing and publishing YA.
I went on to finish the book and realized I actually love writing YA sci-fi and fantasy more than almost anything else I’ve written. Dawn has since become my writing coach, and I have learned so much from her about publishing, writing, AND how to be a better coach.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: LitReactor courses — as with any course you take through an online platform — depend on the instructor. Dawn and Mandy answered every question and gave each member of the class plenty of personal time and attention. They were incredibly generous with their feedback. You can follow Dawn and Mandy on Twitter and get to know their work.
Akimbo’s Story Skills Workshop
I tell stories for a living, so I didn’t quite know what to expect when I signed up for this wonderful Story Skills Workshop. But I’ve had plenty of excellent experiences with Seth Godin as well as Bernadette Jiwa who designed the class.
While I was familiar with much of the content, the course framework walks you through designing a story using what is, simply put, the hero’s journey narrative. The workshop helps you take the narrative a step further. How can you use your story to market yourself? How can you use it to spread an important message? And the stories you create during this workshop can be used online, in print, in video, and also for live events.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: It made me realize the next step in my storytelling evolution is to face my fear of speaking on video and in front of crowds. I’m currently working on new videos for my Youtube channel as well as pitching talks to speak at conferences and other events. (Did I mention this is my big fear? Did I also mention I’m now facing it head-on?)
MasterClass
With MasterClass, you can learn from the masters in all areas. Writing. Acting. Make-up. Leadership. Fashion. Cooking. So far my favorite has been Bobbi Brown’s makeup class. I love that she says you can use your fingers. I’ve always heard you’re never supposed to do that. But I always do it. I’m not a makeup person, so this class is just what I needed for myself. Her lessons have also found their way into my writing.
Next on my list to watch is leadership lessons by Sara Blakely the founder of Spanx. Actually, there are so many I want to watch, I’m finding it overwhelming.
I’d had my eye on MasterClass for a while. I finally bought a subscription when they offered two memberships for the price of one. I gave the second to my sister-in-law as a holiday present.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: There’s so much to learn in this world, it sometimes feels impossible. How do you know where to start? Just start somewhere. There’s no right or wrong. If you like what you’re learning, keep going. If it doesn’t work for you, go learn something else. Just start somewhere.
Corporeal Writing Poetry Classes
I’ve taken three classes with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing — one editing course and two poetry classes. Each was a birthday present I gave to myself, and both have not only been integral to my own education and development, but also pure inspiration with a month of course work. I’ve learned to deepen my writing as well as learned to give feedback in a unique way.
Brigid Yuknavitich taught the two poetry courses. She is a marvel. Her insightful critiques taught me to see the world differently. She showed me how to be patient with my own poetry, how to give a critique that gets to the heart of creativity and boosts the writer, and how poetry is an incredible tool to build your prose writing as well.
I’ve only taken online courses, but Corporeal Writing also has on-site courses in Oregon with a host of incredible speakers and writers.
BIGGEST TAKE AWAY: Editing is not about fixing. It’s about seeing patterns in your writing and then allowing the message to emerge.
Partnership Accelerator
Partnership Accelerator helps you build a mailing list of qualified customers and readers who want to know more about you and your work. You do this by creating partnerships with other businesses. Sometimes other writers. Sometimes your partners will have little to do with writing but may be interested in what you write. During the four weeks of PA, you’ll learn how to find partners, how to approach them, and how to make the right connections so your partnerships grow your list and develop an audience of people who actually want what you have to offer.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: It’s possible to create a repeatable process for pitching. You also learn to write and pitch regularly in spite of the fear of rejection that often goes along with asking people for things.
Growth University
Growth University is the next step after Partnership Accelerator. What do you do with the people who sign up for your mailing list? What do you send them? How will you share your content with them? How will you take them from casual website visitors and make them fans who want to buy your books, courses, and whatever else you sell? GU helps you build a business out of your ideas.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: I’ve never had problems creating content, but figuring out how that content leads to sales and customers presented more of a challenge for me. This course has helped me galvanize all the parts of my marketing and sales — blogging, newsletter, courses, and books — into one overarching plan.
