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Putting Your Money Where Your Writing Is. On Taking A Creative Writing Course

October 12, 2009

Every writer starts somewhere, and every writer has a dream to do something big with what they are currently working on.  It doesn’t matter if you have a blog you publish posts or are working on self-publishing your dream novel, no, you want it all.  The problem is that wanting it all and getting it all are two very different things.

You want traffic on your blog, and yet for some reason the only comments you get are the ones that drive you nuts the so called “friendly helpful advice”?

I’ve gotten those sorts of comment early in my blogging/ writing career, the ones that say grammar, spelling look at spell check, all of them, or the most favorite, the one where they think I’m a hack writer. I might be all of these things, but I’m still blogging after a year, which I think is pretty good.  These comments stopped when I took a good look at my writing and took a creative writing course.

Creative writing courses you say?

If I’m working on my publishing dreams why would I take the time to take a creative writing course?

For starters it’s good and fun to try, for another it is a great way to improve your writing. It’s very easy to write, it’s not so easy to get better without help, in this case it is a creative writing course that helped me.  The fact is that every writer started somewhere and some other more experienced writer showed them the way.  These are writers who take the time out of their busy lives to help another writer. (You know who you are, and you have my thanks.)

Which creative writing course would you take, would you spend the money to get help? I took the one that helped me with novel writing and getting the ideas to write, and yes it did cost me money, but I think that it helped me more than I can imagine. The teacher was great.

If you ever get a chance to take an online writing course, I would recommend one person: Terri Valentine from Writer Online Workshops (Now Writers Online University) if you can get her.

She made sure my writing improved and made certain that my money was well spent. This made the adventure into creative writing courses a lot of fun.  Putting your money where your writing is, is a huge investment of time and money and energy and yet, if you end up improving your writing this makes a world of a difference to your potential readers.

My Question for you today is this: what sort of creative writing course would you take if you think that you need one?

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11 Comments

  • Jill Edmondson
    October 12, 2009 at 2:50 pm

    I can't see any down side to taking a creative writing course. At a minimum, it may be fun and maybe you'll meet some interesting people with whom you can share ideas.

    One of the greatest benefits to me when I took a writing course years ago was that it forced me to produce something for class every week. That in itself was very helpful!

    Cheers, Jill
    http://www.jilledmondson.blogspot.com

  • Damaria Senne
    October 12, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    My feeling is, I have a lot to learn about writing. I'm planning to take a creative writing course before the end of the year. Category romance writing. The course is organised by a publisher whom I'm going to write for, so it's very targeted for a specific need.
    In the near future, I also plan to take a more generalised novel writing course.

  • Uninvoked
    October 12, 2009 at 9:12 pm

    I feel compelled to say–those aren't the comments that drive me nuts. I am borderline ranting here, so feel free to delete but the ones that drive me NUTS are the ones from other bloggers who come to my website, on my post, and blather ON AND ON AND ON about my comment or their website without even once referencing the post they're commenting in. It's just "Hey thanks for the comment ME ME ME bye."

    …

    Okay it's natural to have a "ME ME ME" personality in today's world. Pretty much the only blogs I read for pleasure are blogs like yours. The rest I am replying for the sake of advertising. I want to leave my link there so other people can find my website. At least I have the decency to cover up my shameless desire to spread Uninvoked all over the net by leaving a thoughtful response.

    Most of the time the bloggersleave a reply to my comment on their website, and never bother to look at mine at all. That's okay. It's not really polite, but it's okay. There is no law saying you have to come comment on my website if I commented on yours, and if all you can do is think about what you want to say about what I said about your stuff…please don't.

    The other kind I hate is something like, "Nice writing." Followed by a link to said bloggers website even though the link is already in his/her name.

    People…if you're going to advertise, at least cover it up with a thoughtful reply. -.-

    Okay, I'm done now. Sorry for the rant.

  • Rebecca
    October 13, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    they are a bit expensive, but they are fun, and with an online course that i did, I had the benefit of having other classmates from around the world reading my work.

  • Wendy Nelson Tokunaga
    October 13, 2009 at 3:18 pm

    I think creative writing courses can be very beneficial. The one I took early on at a community college (extremely reasonably priced) had me writing three short stories in a semester. That way I definitely produced work and learned to love deadlines. It really helped in my path to becoming a published writer.

  • Alexandria Constantinova
    January 13, 2014 at 5:47 pm

    As a former University Professor who taught Literature and Creative Writing classes, I'd recommend any creative writing class that pushed you out of your comfort zone, got you reading things you didn't ordinarily read, and trying to write genres you've never written before. You can learn from any kind of writing — yes, even bad writing, though that's not my usual recommendation — and you can always learn from good teachers.

    Brava to you, Rebecca, for taking a class. Hope you had tremendous fun as well as working hard.

    Alexandria

  • Mfrederick
    March 7, 2015 at 1:52 am

    I feel I may have stumbled across this post as an act of the stars and the cosmos aligning. I am currently enrolled in a freelance writing course. I have been giving serious thought to enrolling in their creative writing course, as well. This post just ended the internal dialogue. Enrolling tonight. Thank you.