Have you wanted to attend a Christian writers’ conference but couldn’t afford the tuition and travel? Consider taking online classes. There are a number of options. Usually, the fees are reasonable, and there are no travel expenses to worry about. Your continuing education dollar goes entirely to honing your craft and getting to know other writers as you learn.

The Christian PEN: Freelance editor Kathy Ide organized The Christian Proofreaders and Editors Network as a Google group. She offers online courses for people wanting to become freelance editors. I joined the group about four years ago. The discussions on the group were helpful to me, but the online classes have helped me improve my writing and editing. Especially useful to me as a writer was my first class, “Proofreading and Editing for Clients.”

Contributing members of TCP pay lower course fees than non-members, but all the fees are quite reasonable. Kathy Ide does not teach all of the courses. Instructors must be contributing members and submit a course syllabus to Kathy for approval. She manages the enrollment details for all courses. The complete list of course offerings is here. The 2010 course schedule is here.

Write Integrity Editorial Services: Tracy Ruckman, freelance editor and photographer, is the proprietor of WEIS. She offers a broad range of online courses on writing craft. Most workshops are for fiction writers, but she offers some non-fiction, organization, and marketing topics, too. Ruckman’s courses are modeled after TCP’s. Tracy finds the instructors, schedules the classes, and handles enrollment. For details and 2010 schedule, see this page.

Writer’s Digest Online Workshops: These courses are more costly that TCP and WIES offerings, but they do carry the Writer’s Digest name. General information is here. Some courses are six weeks, while others go for as long as 14 weeks. See a detailed list of offerings here. WD also offers special events like the upcoming (March 11, 2010) webinar featuring literary agent Rachelle Gardner. Details here.

Disclaimer: I have not taken any of the WD workshops myself, but I have heard from friends that they were pleased with their experience.