Course Sales and Promotions
Enroll in online creative writing courses with Writers.com, and take the next step on your writing journey with support from our award-winning instructors and welcoming community.
You’ll get regular instructor feedback on your work, ongoing collaboration with other committed writers, and a nourishing and supportive course structure.
Learn from published authors who have spent decades perfecting their craft, and are dedicated to supporting you and your work. Don’t miss out: find the online writing course for you today!
Courses and Workshops on Sale Now:
May Courses
Get It Done: Fast-Draft Your Novel in 13 Weeks
with Troy Wilderson
Write a complete first draft of your novel in this 13-week intensive, where you'll learn everything you need to write a successful story.
June Courses
The Body and Soul of Your Memoir: Shape, Focus, and Write Your Memoir
with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
Unearth your memoir's soul (its main focus and calling) and body (its organization and structure) as you write toward a completed draft.
The Watching Eye/Thinking Mind: Writing Flash Fiction
with Barbara Henning
In this ten-week workshop with poet and novelist Barbara Henning, write tiny fictions while experimenting with first and third person points of view and analyzing how point of view affects the craft of fiction writing. Barbara will provide practical instruction and assignments, suggestions for revision, and lectures and and articles.
Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Telling True Stories
with Nicole Hardy
How do you tell your stories beautifully and authentically? Learn the fundamentals of creative nonfiction with Nicole Hardy.
The Elements of Fiction
with Jessie Roy
Good fiction writing can feel like juggling as you balance all the different elements of storytelling. By the end of this course, you'll be an expert juggler.
July Courses
Write Your Novel! The Workshop With Jack
with Jack Smith
Get a good start on a novel in just ten weeks, or revise a novel you’ve already written. Free your imagination, move steadily ahead and count the pages!
Opening the Door to Poetry
with Jude Nutter
How do we use poetry to express life's marvelous complexity? Learn how to control language beyond the "ordinary" and discover the many possibilities of poetry.
Show and Tell: How to Write Captivating Memoir and Nonfiction
with Brad Wetzler
Your true story of healing or transformation can captivate and empower your readers. Learn how to balance showing the vivid details of your own journey with telling the broader themes for readers to apply in their own lives.
Creative Nonfiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Memoir, Personal Essay
The Cabin In The (Virtual) Woods: Writing Horror Comedy
with Giulietta Nardone
The line between horror and comedy is a lot thinner than you think. In this class, make your readers laugh in one sentence and cower in the next.
Both Fish and Fowl: The Prose Poem
with Anna Scotti
A successful prose poem reads like a magic trick. Learn how to wield the powers of poetry in the context of prose in this comprehensive prose poetry course.
Plot Your Novel with the Three-Act Structure
with Denise Santomauro
The 3 act structure gives us the scaffolding we can hang our stories off of. Come away from this class with a fully plotted novel and a plan to write it.
Writing Autobiographical Fiction
with Jack Smith
Learn to depart from "what really happened," and write compelling fiction from your own life experiences.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Short Story
Writing Our Grief: How to Channel Loss into Creative Expression
with Rudri Patel
Writing about grief is a powerful healing tool. Turn pain into power in this personal essay course, with instructor Rudri Patel.
Creative Nonfiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Memoir, Personal Essay
Writing the Memoir-in-Essays
with Margo Steines
Learn how to tell your story through the memoir-in-essays, a form that allows writers to interweave the facts of their lives in interesting and evocative ways.
The Lyric Essay: Invitation to Play
with Elizabeth Winder
Create dynamic, genre-bending works of musical prose in this playful and exploratory lyric essay workshop.
Comics for People Who Can’t Draw!
with Aubrey Hirsch
Comic strip artists rely much more on creativity than on artistic skill. In this workshop, you'll learn all the tools you need to make fun and engaging comic strips—even if your drawing level is "stick figures."
Beginner’s Mind: A Mindful Approach to Personal Essays
with Susan Barr-Toman
Write true and meaningful personal essays with the tools of mindfulness. We'll discover new insights in our work as we center ourselves, confront our inner critics, and write mindfully.
August Courses
Comics for People Who Can’t Draw!
with Aubrey Hirsch
Can't draw? No problem! In this workshop, learn how to tell complete stories in publication-ready comics, no matter your artistic background.
Writing Chronic Illness
with Margo Steines
Creative nonfiction offers a container for the sharing and exploration of illness. Tell the story of your body in this healing-oriented workshop.
Creative Nonfiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Memoir, Personal Essay
Crafting Poems in Form: Rhyme, Meter, Fixed Forms, and More
with Jonathan J.G. McClure
Working within the guidelines of a fixed poetic structure can make your poetry more creative, not less. Find freedom in form in this 8 week workshop.
Rapid Story Development: A Master Plan for Building Stories That Work
with Jeff Lyons
In this 10 week story writing class, Jeff Lyons pairs the Enneagram with story development techniques to revolutionize your writing practice.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Short Story
The Deep Dive: Poem As Self-Discovery
with Meghan Sterling
Through poetry, we can access our deepest truths. Use the poem as a roadmap to self-discovery in this 6-week poetic deep-dive.
Poems of All Sizes: Haiku, Tanka, and Japanese Poetic Forms
with Miho Kinnas
Explore the history and poetics of Japanese poetry forms, and write haiku, tanka, renga, haiga, and linked verse poetry.
Warp and Weft: Weaving Free Verse Poetry from Life
with Anna Scotti
Weave everyday events into deftly-written free verse poems in this generative, creativity-centered poetry workshop.
Where the Diary Ends and the Essay Begins
with Shelby Hinte
Start a diary practice and turn it into a mode of writing personal essays in this generative journaling workshop.
Write Your Picture Book!
with Kelly Bingham
Picture books have changed greatly over the last few decades, and the market is wide open for fresh ideas. Join us in this six-week intensive where we’ll take that idea of yours and turn it into a manuscript!
Long Night’s Journey into Day: Writing Poetry Through and About Serious Illness
with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
Poetry can help us integrate and learn from our experiences as patients, survivors, and/or caregivers. Join a supportive community, explore poetic and healing traditions, and spark powerful poems into being.
The Joy of Poetry: A Beginner-Friendly Workshop
with Joy Roulier Sawyer
Have you wanted to get into poetry, but don't know where to start? Learn the craft from the Joy of poetry herself in this welcoming workshop.
Write Your Novel in 16 Weeks!
with Briana Una McGuckin
In this generative novel writing course, we'll go from writing a strong beginning to writing "The End" on your novel's first draft.
September Courses
A Writerly Life: Develop a Writing Routine that Works for You
with Shelby Hinte
What does a writer's life look like? Build a productive writing habit in this course for writers of all backgrounds.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Poetry, Short Story
Creative Nonfiction and the Personal Essay
with Gretchen Clark
Gretchen Clark pick axes her way into the volcanic marriage of real life and fiction. Weekly writing with incisive feedback.
Flash Fiction: Writing the Short-Short Story
with Barbara Henning
Write 1–3-page flash fiction in this online course with Barbara Henning, drawing on classic, poetic & experimental elements. Read the form’s masters.
Writing with Consistency and Courage
with Tamara Dean
What makes a successful writer? It's not talent, craft, or even the right connections—it's consistency and courage.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Live Workshop, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Poetry, Short Story
Putting It All Together: Completing Your First Poetry Manuscript
with Caitlin Scarano
How do you put together a poetry book? From choosing a theme to ordering your poems, you'll end this course with a ready-to-publish manuscript.
Dread and Desire: Gothic Fiction Techniques to Lure and Horrify Your Readers
with Briana Una McGuckin
This Halloween, learn how to write eerie, haunting moods in this comprehensive course on Gothic writing techniques.
Writing Mindfulness: Sensual World/Poetry Mind
with Marc Olmsted
A four-week class, melding the language mind with the sensual: How to turn detailed observation into a poem. With Marc Olmsted.
October Courses
Plumbing the Past: Turning Life Experience into Poetry, Flash and Creative Non-Fiction
with Tina Barry
Dig deep into personal ritual while studying narrative poets, short fiction and non-fiction authors, and food writers.
The Spirituality of Poetry
with Joy Roulier Sawyer
Let the spirit of language move through you. In this 6 week course, we will study, write, and share poetry about the sacredness of human experience.
November Courses
Poetic Prose: The Prose Poem
with Barbara Henning
Explore the border between prose poetry and flash fiction. For writers of fiction, poetry, essay and memoir.
About Our Online Writing Courses
We've been offering writing classes online since 1995 to all kinds of students. Whether you're completely new to the Internet (back then, everyone was) or more experienced learning online, our writing courses will be a great fit for you.
Online Course Platform
We offer our classes through an online course platform called Wet Ink. It's designed to be simple and usable for people without a technical background. You'll be sent instructions for joining your class in Wet Ink on the day it begins.
Weekly Assignments
Most classes are structured around weekly assignments: once each week, the teacher emails or posts a lecture to the list that includes a writing assignment, and the students complete the assignment and send it to the list. This means that the teacher and all students in the class see all completed assignments.
The instructor writes his or her feedback on the assignment and sends it back to the list, and students are encouraged to offer feedback on each others' work.
Additionally, some classes are set up as workshops, and are organized around feedback on student manuscripts.
There are no specific times that you must be online. This allows you to work on the class material at your convenience: it's the ideal way to take a class.
Class Discussion and Connection
The list also hosts class discussions about lessons, assignments, and writing in general. The more interaction among students, the more valuable and enjoyable the class. We offer guidelines to keep dialogue supportive and beneficial, and no negative or abusive behavior is allowed.
Writing can be a lonely pursuit, and it's often difficult for writers to make contact with each other. Part of our reason for being here is to change that. We encourage class members to develop ongoing correspondence in which they can share their work. Often a sense of community forms, and some groups have continued to work together long after the class is over.
With the odd "anonymous intimacy" of the Internet, it's easier to take chances in your writing, and to be honest and thoughtful in your criticism of others' writing. First-time students in our online writing courses are often surprised how much they learn, and how much they enjoy the experience.
If you have further questions, browse the Writers.com FAQ.
Our Online Writing Class Format in Detail
Most of our courses take place on an online learning platform called Wet Ink. We also offer some workshop-style courses through Zoom, which will be clearly marked in the course description. The details below are for our Wet Ink-based courses.
When you enroll in one of our online writing classes, we'll send an email confirming your participation. On the start date of the workshop, your instructor will send a welcome letter explaining how to access the Wet Ink classroom.
You'll access the entire course within Wet Ink, including:
- Reading lectures
- Starting or joining discussions
- Submitting assignments each week
- Commenting on other students’ work
- Receiving direct weekly feedback on your work from the instructor
When the course wraps up, we’ll send you a questionnaire about your experience in the course.
You won't need to be online at a particular time or day. In general, you should plan to check in with the course at least a few times each week.
Thousands of our alumni have returned to study with us again, and some have been with us since the beginning in 1995. We hope you’ll become part of the Writers.com community, too.
Questions about our online writing courses, our community, or anything else? Email us at writers@writers.com, please!
What Sets Our Online Writing Courses Apart
At Writers.com, we have 25 years of experience offering the best writing classes online. Many elements set our courses apart:
- Our instructors are gifted, experienced teachers who are writers themselves. They also care about their students and the progress they make. Any good "school" or workshop can teach you the craft of writing; we offer personal attention and inspiration as well.
- Each instructor develops his or her own courses. Unlike other online writing schools, we have no prepared, prepackaged classes randomly taught by just anyone who has the time to teach it. You know exactly who your teacher will be before you ever register, and you'll receive feedback from that teacher on your writing.
- We accept a maximum of 12 students per class in most classes. You will never be a face in the crowd in a Writers.com class.
- We take your work seriously, but we also have fun. Some of our classes are rigorous and intense. If you want to be a professional writer, you need a tough, but supportive, environment. We have that. But we also offer other classes that are a chance to experiment, learn for the sheer joy of learning, explore new ideas, and discover new pathways.
- Our classes fit into your daily life – no matter what time zone you are in.
- If you are able to visit websites, you can participate fully in our classes. The course software is simple to learn and designed for learners of all kinds across the globe.
- Writers.com is operated by a small, dedicated staff of human beings who genuinely want to help you meet your writing goals. Having a technical problem, or finding that a course isn't the right fit for you? Contact us and we'll work it out, person-to-person.
Join one of our writing courses, and experience the Writers.com difference for yourself!