These courses have been designed for beginner and emerging writers. These are people who are yet to be published or who want to make their work as good as possible before self-publishing it. These courses suit people who do not have the time or finances to do year-long writing courses at tertiary institutions or who live in regional areas or whose daily lives aren’t conducive to the restrictions of an in-person writing courses. All of the courses at Writing 101 have be designed for you to do that at your own pace. Getting through the seven lessons of a course may take you a few days, a few weeks or even a few months. Whatever works for you!

There are no assignments, so you can relax if you’re the type of person who gets assignment-related stress. However, each lesson has an exercise (some more than one), that put into practice what you have been learning. These exercises are not marked; they are an opportunity for you to gauge your understanding and progression. Whether or not you do the exercises is up to you, but you are strongly encouraged to do so. After all, no-one’s going to see them.

The courses have been designed so that feedback is unnecessary. Concepts are explained simply, with plenty of examples. Exercises are also easy to understand. Rather than seek feedback from outside, it’s more important that you are able to measure your own progress. Before you start each lesson, ask yourself how much you know about that particular topic; and at the end, ask yourself the same question again. Of course, if there is something you don’t understand, feel free to contact us using the form on the Contact page. I promise you will get a response.

The short answer is ‘yes’, we can do a manuscript assessment for you. However, a word of caution. By the nature of the work that they involve, manuscript assessments are not cheap. Everyone should get a manuscript assessment before sending a work to a publisher or agent but the trick is to do it at the right time. Do it too early in your drafting/writing process and you’ll inevitably have to get another one later on (or more than one), and unless you’re drowning in cash, it’s a costly process. Do it too late and you may find yourself having to restructure and rewrite something that you thought was nearly ready to go. I would suggest doing a complete redraft after completing our course, and then asking for a manuscript assessment, taking into account all that you learnt. Or, if you’re at the start of the process, finishing a complete draft or two before contacting us. As far as price is concerned, it depends on several factors, including the length of the work. So it’s best to send us what you have in mind and we can give you an individual quote.

How do you define ‘help’? I can guarantee that completing any one of our courses will take you closer to being published than you were beforehand. If anyone out there promises you that they can get you published, then they’re either lying or they’re really a vanity publisher trying to hook you in to pay for your own (expensive) publishing. Getting published is hard, very hard. But it’s not impossible. The best way to become a published author, other than publishing yourself, is to become a better writer. And these courses certainly do that. So yes, I guess we can help you get published.

There are currently plans for a couple of other courses down the track but if you have a course in mind that you would like to do, then drop us a line. We’re open to ideas.

Once you enrol in a course, you will be provided with a password. That password will give you unlimited access. However, the password can only be used by the original user.