I’m beginning to make some changes to my online writing courses. I’m starting with my flagship free course called Starting to Write. (Scroll down if you simply want the links to the writing challenges.)
Believe it or not there are 9,465 students enrolled on Starting to Write, in 149 countries, and they speak 41 different languages. I am blown away by that every time I look that up! Of those students, 1,460 are actively doing the course right now. It’s for complete beginners, who have never written before.
My aim? I’d like to encourage people who enroll to see the course through to the end, so I’m hoping to jazz it up a bit and take out the waffle! I’ve noticed that some non-native English speakers take the course to practise their written English skills. I didn’t design it that way, but I’m really glad to be able to help. That makes it even more important that it’s waffle-free. I’d also like participants to get to the practical activities as quickly as possible.
I’ve got my lovely beta testers helping me out by reviewing the beginning of the course, while I re-record some of the audio. I’ve just added a section called ‘Your Challenges’ – where you’ll get a series of challenges to help you to turn up and write. The first one is ‘Your Writing Calendar Challenge‘ and the second – hot off the press today – is ‘Your Writing Goals Challenge‘. Anyone can take a look at the challenges – even if you didn’t sign up as a beta tester – because it’s a free course. Let me know what you think.
