How to Choose a Writing Class

Writers have to exercise and expand their writing skills all the time. It's an ongoing requirement. One of the best ways to do this is by taking a writing class.

Some of the advantages of participating in a writing class are that you:

• become part of a community of writers
• learn new techniques
• get help solving writing challenges you're facing
• get encouragement in your efforts, and
  
• get feedback on your work
• write on a schedule
  

But there are drawbacks, as well, to taking a writing class.

The instructor might not be versed in the genre you're interested in. (Google the instructor to find out his or her writing credits.)

The instructor might not be very good at instructing. (Ask your writer friends or call the administration of the school and ask about the instructor's previous valuations.)

Your classmates might not be on your level. (The course description usually specifies the writing experience expected of students. But if it doesn't, ask the school's administration.)

You might underestimate the time required for you to produce weekly writing assignments. (See www.examiner.com/How-to-choose-an-online-writing-class.) And related to this: you probably will have to read your classmates' work.

That can be a good thing. Reading others' work shows you how they handle various writing challenges--for example, choice or words, use of scenes and images, truth telling in non-fiction.

However--and the "however" is a big one--you'll have to spend precious writing time not writing, but critiquing a dozen other people's work. That's why, in the classes I teach, I do not have my students read their classmates' work. If you have very few hours each week to dedicate to your creative writing, it's a real hardship to use some of those hours on someone else's work.