“3 Exercises for Launching an Online Writing Class for Profit and Enjoyment”
By Melanie Faith
The Timing has Never Been Better to Teach Creative Writing!
The field of teaching creative writing online has flourished in the past decade. When I started teaching online classes, most universities and colleges didn’t offer any online courses and I didn’t know a single freelance writer who did, either.
Happily, in 2020, the tide has turned and opportunities abound for educators who are passionate about their love for writing.
By the way: it’s not a requirement to have taught English for years offline in public schools or to have published a book before sharing what you know with eager learners.
If you’re organized and communicative, enthusiastic about self-expression, and motivated both in your own writing practice and to direct other writers in theirs, there is sure to be a program to fit your teaching goals (or you’ll create one!) and students keen to study with you. Read on!
Why Teach Online?
The vast majority of my teaching is now as a freelancer online instructor and professor, and I love it! Let’s look at cool pros to teaching online.
A highly-flexible schedule. As a freelance teacher, I am free to go to lunch with a friend or to grade at 2 in the morning without waking at 7 am to report to a brick-and-mortar classroom.
Most classes are asynchronous, meaning that students and teachers literally can pop by any time of day and night to leave and answer messages and download/upload content, so teachers and students can communicate at 4 am in their pjs if they want.
Many online programs, including Women on Writing, offer great instructor freedom to choose texts, a class topic, and to develop a course and hand-pick or write handouts of our own choosing. This support for unique and individualistic course content inspires instructors as well as student writers.
Community building with fellow writers. I regularly make friends with creative writers from all across the world who share many of my same writing and life goals, including keeping my writing and publishing life active and lively.
The pleasure of making another writer’s path more-informed and supported. Much of what I learned about writing and publishing during my first ten years as a creative writer was through my own slow process of blunders. It’s very rewarding to offer fellow writers advice, and then to see them and their writing make their own pathways to editors and readers.
Motivation for my own work. Nothing keeps me engaged in my own writing process like encouraging others in theirs. As I often tell my students and clients: “We’re all writers in this writing journey together.”
Get Started Today! 3 Helpful Exercises
As you begin to consider writing topics you might teach, here are three thematic questions to get your wheels turning about the kind of class you might offer and the unique skills you will bring to an online classroom. Consider answering each question as a free-write, setting a timer for at least fifteen or twenty minutes for each question.
1. What genres have you written in the past five years? What style or genre of writing has most
inspired you recently? List any books (such as craft books about writing, novels, poetry collections, essay anthologies, etc.) as well as writing websites that might be fun to share.
2. What excites you most about the opportunity to teach online? List as much as you’d like. Pinpointing the qualities that encourage you will integrate this zest into your online classroom preparations, creating an environment where writers flourish.
3. Write a paragraph to introduce yourself to your ideal student. Describe what brought you to teach this class online and something about your writing journey. Feel free to share a dream for your own writing. Then, ask your delightful ideal student two or three questions you’d like to know about them.
This exercise is one I wrote and offered to a client who was considering teaching online, and he found it very insightful to his writing process and to picturing his targeted class audience.
Over the course of a few days, your answers will point you in exciting directions for your genre, class topic/theme, and potential texts for a future course.
