Emily M. Akin » Writers’ Digest

Hone Your Craft with Online Courses

Emily Akin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:13:39 +0000

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.

Promotion/Networking: Social Media

emilyakin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:50:26 +0000

Most aspiring authors know they need to build their network of writers, editors, and publishers. They know that they need to understand the publishing industry so that they can be positioned to sell their book or articles. In my previous post on networking, I discussed what networking is and how word of mouth marketing builds your network. See that post here.

Social media are a great way to build your contact list. Although there are several options, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn seem to be the most popular with writers. The first two can be used to network with publishing industry folks as well as friends and family. LinkedIn is more for networking with other professionals. There’s a great article on the Writers’ Digest site entitled “A Writer’s Guide to Social Networking” that covers these three social media. Take a look at this article this week, and I’ll write about my own experiences with them in my next post.

Meanwhile, for those of you who have not tried social media, follow the links below to how-to information on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin:

Ehow/Facebook or Butterscotch.com/Facebook

Butterscotch.com/Twitter

Butterscotch.com/LinkedIn

Update on Doing My Own Website/Blogs

emilyakin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:05:00 +0000

I’ve been pretty busy this month re-doing my own site at http://www.emilyakin.com/ and the site for Kentucky Christian Writers Conference. I’m using Front Page 2000, and I’ve forced myself to learn more about it as I’ve re-designed my site with essentially the same structure. I managed to find a nice image to use along with my new portrait. Since I don’t use nail polish, I didn’t want the fingers on the keyboard to be “painted.” I had a hard time finding a keyboard with typing fingers that were, shall we say, gender neutral. You may have noticed that I used the same image in the header for this blog that I used on my Web site.

I started from scratch with the Ky Christian Writers site. The theme for the writers conference is “Publish His glorious deeds among the nations” Psalm 96:3 (NLT). The print logo used by the group has a globe and a book with the Bible verse superimposed. I wanted to keep the concept but have more color and depth for the Web site design. I searched for a free graphic on the Web and found one that’s just right. I set up the banner in Publisher 2000, copied and pasted into Ulead photo software and converted it to a jpg. Once I had the banner, it was just a matter of plugging it in and setting up the rest of the page. I’ll admit, I did have to get professional help at one point.

I used the same banner on http://www.kychristianwriters.blogspot.com/ to provide continuity between the two sites. If you’re at all interested in writers conferences, please subscribe to the KCWC blog, and maybe we’ll see you at the conference next year.

I’m doing OK with Front Page, but I would not have gone out and bought it to do these sites. I want to do more research on the WordPress version that you download onto your computer. This version requires a hosting account, and therefore is not free. Supposedly, though, you get a lot more functions with that version.

News flash: I just found a great article on Web sites for writers on the Writer’s Digest site. Be sure to check it out, especially if you don’t already have a site or if you’re thinking of changing your current arrangement.