Hone your skills

The internet is chalked full of writing courses, workshops, and critique groups. However, most of them are for a fee. Surely there is a way to improve your skills, or practice writing, without paying to do what you love.

It has been my experience that if you are looking for something, it’s always there. It’s just not always easy to find. Here are a few websites that might interest you:

The Write Practice:

I love this website. With each post, they offer a  practice exercise idea. They cover a vast array of topics, and always make you think.

Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop:

This workshop is hosted on Mama Kat’s blog each Thursday. It is extremely popular, but maybe not the most helpful. Each Monday she e-mails out 5 writing prompts for you to write about, then on Thursday you can link up on her blog and see how other writers responded to the prompts. This workshop isn’t about good writing, just about writing. While some of the posts are amazing, others… well, they just post to post. It’s a good creative writing exercise though, and while I would guess that less than a handful of the posts are actually written by actual writers, it is great for creativity. Sometime the prompts are things that you cannot relate to whatsoever, so it’s fun to twist them into your own topics.

Of course, there is no short of writing prompts on the internet. A quick google search will provide tons of sites with lists of prompts for different ages, stages, and places.

Education Portal:

There is a fabulous list of universities that offer free writing courses on Education Portal. If you have ever thought about going back to college to improve your writing skills, this is a great way to do so free of charge. There are 10 universities, and over 20 courses to choose from. From technical writing to creative writing, I’m sure you can find a course that will benefit you.

College Degree.com:

College Degree.com has a list of over 50 free online writing courses for different levels and styles.

The Crafty Writer:

The Crafty Writer has a free creative writing course. This is something that you work through on your own. It was written several years ago, and while the author will no longer give you feedback on your writing, it is still known as a good course to take and contains a lot of information.

Critique Circle:

Critique Circle is an online critique group/ongoing writer’s workshop. The number of options that they offer makes your experience there unique and practically anything you want it to be.

There are actually tons of free writing courses and workshops out there, you just have to find them. While I was looking around online doing research for this post, I came across a post on Freelance Writing Jobs that included a list of 31 Free Online Writing Courses that surprisingly didn’t duplicate any of the ones that I had already found.

What about you? Have you taken any free writing courses, or been involved in any online writer’s workshops that you can tell us about?