Online Course
Creative Nonfiction Boot Camp 5-week
January 09 - February 12, 2023
Level Fundamentals
Write every day, no matter what.
Additional Information
Kick-start your writing with our most popular class. Start that long-delayed project, develop essential writing habits with daily writing prompts, and reach your goals.
You want to do it. You mean to start that writing project … eventually. Now is the time to put excuses aside and start your writing project. Creative Nonfiction’s special boot camp sessions will do just that by providing firm deadlines, daily writing prompts, and weekly feedback. Along the way you’ll also develop the habit of writing regularly which will serve you all year long (and well beyond!).
After 5 weeks, if you’ve completed the minimum number of assignments, you’ll have an essay of between 2,000 and 4,000 words, or at least a dozen passages to use as starting points for future essays.
Course Schedule
Week 1: Generating ideas
During this week we will focus on finding a topic or topics that you can feel passionate about as you begin to write, and ways to help your readers be as excited about your subject as you are. This week’s exercises will cover a wide variety of subject matter to help you explore several different possibilities for your writing focus. If you already have a subject in mind, you can forgo the exercises and simply write 300 words per day on your chosen subject.
WEEK 2: YOUR WRITING LIFE
Finding time to write and overcoming your own doubts can be two of the biggest obstacles to moving ahead with your writing. This week’s lecture will discuss some practical approaches to addressing these problems, and the exercises will keep you writing through the week.
Week 3: Overcoming writer’s block
Almost every writer experiences writer’s block at some point in his or her career, but the writers who actually go on to have a career are those who find ways to fight through. This week’s lecture will focus on the potential causes of and solutions to writer’s block, and the exercises will focus on ways to continue pieces you have already begun but are having trouble finishing.
Week 4: Stretching your limits
During this week we’ll discuss the ways in which experimenting with different factors—structure, unusual patterns of language, the timeline of an event—can help you to see your topic from a new angle and keep on writing. These same techniques can also bring new life to topics that are written about frequently, to help your piece stand out in the crowd. The exercises for this week will ask you to stretch your limits; you are also welcome to continue working on a longer piece instead of using the prompts.
Week 5: Review, re-mix, revise
This week we’ll consider ways in which returning to familiar subject matter can serve as a catalyst for creating new work. Exercises will explore the hidden potential of well-worn subjects.
Course Instructor
Hear from our Students
Creative Nonfiction’s online writing classes have helped more than 3,000 writers tell their stories better.
Read Success StoriesTestimonials
I enjoyed reading other peoples work and getting feedback about my own work– the handouts/video links and class lessons were also very informative and relevantly paced to the give structural guidelines.
Catherine O’Neill