Writers are always learning. We learn from actively engaging in our craft, of course, but we also, if possible, learn from activities surrounding the act of writing, like attending courses, lectures, and conferences and reading craft books.
Formal writing courses are, of course, incredible experiences, but I think there’s also something to be said for self-taught craft. That is, putting together your own curriculum to explore during your writing-adjacent time, especially for those of us who aren’t in a position to go back to school. Even if you attend an MFA or regularly get into prestigious workshops, those experiences will take up only a fraction of your life. Are you really not going to learn more and stretch the boundaries and capacity of your writing talent in the off years?
What follows is a bit of advice on building a self-taught writing curriculum, which is then rounded out by a bulleted list of resources I’ve found useful in my own writing life and the lives of my writing friends and clients. I hope it’ll help you, too.
Building a Self-Led Craft Education
First things first, to build a self-led craft education, build a syllabus based on your goals. What do you want to get better at doing? For instance, if you want to improve your ability to write short stories, subscribe to a few of your dream literary magazines, the ones you’d kill to get a piece published in. Annotate the stories you really engage with as you read them.
Depending on your goal, you might find essays by or about authors whose work you admire; if there’s a particular genre or literary movement you’re trying to learn more about, do a deep dive into them! I come from the generation whose teachers often maligned Wikipedia, and while I completely agree that Wikipedia itself does not hold water as a primary source, if you go to the citations section at the end of a Wiki stub, you can often find useful primary source materials to dig more deeply into.
If there’s a literary device or narrative style you’ve been noticing that really gets you going (e.g., frame narrative, zeugma, free indirect discourse), you might find essays on them, too. JSTOR, an online repository of academic journal articles, is often accessible through one’s former (or current) university or through your local library system. If this isn’t the case for you, there are free personal “Register & Read” accounts that permit you free online reading of more than 10 million articles.
Give craft essays and collections a shot, too. Ones I regularly recommend include Matt Bell’s Refuse to Be Done and John Yorke’s Into the Woods.
Beyond building a syllabus for your goals, I strongly encourage writers to enroll in workshops to simulate the feedback element of a more formal writing program, like an MFA. Then set a writing schedule, if you can, for the generative element of a writing program. Hurley Winkler, Jamie Attenberg, and Chelsea Hodson all have great resources for generative writing.
Okay, I’m going to hop off my autodidact soapbox! Thanks for indulging me. And now, on to the sweet, sweet links!
Writing Classes
Reedsy Learning offers inbox-based correspondence courses for free and live instruction starting at a flat fee of $49
Digital-first Big Four publishing imprint Bookouture has just launched PageOne Academy. They’re still building out their offerings, but they look promising.
Workshops in Some Major U.S. Cities and Metropolitan Areas
Don’t see your city on this list? Do a quick search for your city and state plus “writing workshops” to get started.
Gotham Writers Workshop and CRIT (New York, NY)
James River Writers (Richmond, VA)
Red Bud Writing Project (Raleigh, NC)
Women Writing for (a) Change (Jacksonville, FL)
The Porch (Nashville, TN)
GrubStreet (Boston, MA)
UCLA Extension and LA Writers Group (Los Angeles, CA)
Attic Institute and Write Around Portland (Portland, OR)
StoryStudio Chicago and Chicago Writers Studio (Chicago, IL)
San Francisco Writers Workshop, The Writing Salon, and The Writers Grotto (San Francisco, CA)
Seattle Writes, Hugo House, and BARN Writers’ Studio on Bainbridge Island (Seattle, WA)
Low-Residence MFAs With Sterling Reputations
Low-residence MFAs are a great solution for anyone who cannot devote two years to full-time education, not to mention potentially moving out of state for said education. These are some of the top programs in the country, so give them a look!
Bennington College MFA in Writing (Bennington, VT)
Stetson University MFA in Creative Writing (Deland, FL)
Antioch University MFA in Creative Writing (Los Angeles, CA)
Poets & Writers has a full database of creative writing MFAs, both low-residency and full-residency, for you to check out here.