Unlocking Your Writing Potential: The Power of Classes and Newsletters

Several times a day, the email notices arrive, inviting me to participate in a writing class. Get your pocket MFA, they advertise. Learn how to write a compelling memoir, tap into your deeper self. Have fun with flash, they offer. Expand your knowledge of fables. Learn how to start a novel. Learn how to finish a novel. Learn about pacing, characterization, foreshadowing, duality.

A big industry exists around teaching writers how-to-write. Some of the classes are for beginners and others are for published writers seeking to sharpen a specific skill.

A big industry also exists based on newsletters, many of which provide valuable writing guidance. While some newsletters are free, others ask for donations or require payment. If a writer can convince 100 people to pay $50 a year to subscribe to their weekly newsletter, they’ve earned five thousand dollars.

I’m posting about the newsletters along with the classes for a reason. Many of the good newsletters teach you something. Other writing newsletters focus on publishing opportunities, but for this blog, I’m focusing on newsletters and classes aimed at boosting writing craft skills.

The median income from books for fulltime authors in 2022 and published by the Author’s Guild in September 2023 is a mere $10,000. Add other activities such as lecturing, social media, classes etc. and the figure goes up to $20,00-still at the poverty level. Thus, it is no wonder that authors need to get a supplemental job or work hard at building a subscription list that might generate income.

The favorites that arrive in my “inbox” are the writers who share links to work they’ve read and admired and then post why they’ve singled out those particular pieces of work.

The start of each week the literary journal River Teeth sends me “Beautiful Things”- One less than 250 word CNF essay selected to be shared. This week it was “Laughter Dies Last” by Rebecca Dimyan. Nine times out of ten, I deeply admire the essay, taking time to reflect on the details the writer chose to include and the information implied. Capturing a piece of observed or experienced life in less than 250 words is a challenge. Have I been accepted by River Teeth-yet? No, is the answer, but that doesn’t stop me from trying.

Matt Kendrick is a writer/teacher I started to follow who periodically sends out a newsletter Mondettes, I subscribe to. Mondettes features a guest writer who shares several links to brief stories and posts what they like about each. Matt’s monthly article on craft, which he posts on Substack under Prattlefog and Gravelrap is also a great resource.

Kathy Fish is a writer I’ve followed for a long time, as her pieces are included in many anthologies. A three-time Best Small Fictions winner, you can follow her A rt of Flash Fiction on Substack a s a paid (for more content) or unpaid subscriber. She generously shares writing prompts and flash writing “strategy.”

Tommy Dean, also on Substack, Flash Perspectives and is the editor of Fractured Lit, a literary magazine devoted to flash fiction, who shares flash pieces he admires with subscribers and discusses the qualities that drew him to a particular story. I have taken online classes with Tommy, Catching Lightening Flash Fiction Club, and like his approach of sharing and discussing a published work he admires and then using that work to launch a prompt. For example, a narrative that is propelled by the unpredictability of weather events, might inspire a prompt that asks you to use weather and its unpredictability in a particular way and sequence.

One Story is a nonprofit that has been around since 2001, that publishes by subscription one short story a month, never the same story twice, and they also expanded to one teen story subscriptions. They also offer classes, and I remember taking a few online classes with them pre pandemic and in advance of my pursuit of a creative writing MFA. Included in their online classes are “reading groups” for readers and writers to discuss a specific book and pull it apart from a craft perspective to gain a better understanding of the particular genre, author, and era. I just finished reading The Other by Thomas Tryon and have the privilege of discussing it with a bevy of other writers led by Dan Chaon, author of one of my favorite psychological thrillers-Ill Will. In the past I one of my favorite classes with them was Patrick Ryan’s one on building a short story collection, a version of which is currently offered as a “self guided” class.

For more of what works for me in my quest to keep refining my writing, I’m providing a link to an interview I did with poet and writer Ellis Elliot for her blog post on her website Bewilderness Writing. Ellis offers a different kind of teaching service, that focuses on “free writing.” Many people find it hard to get started writing, or may be suffering from writer’s block and a number of communities exist that focus on folks gathering together online, writing and sharing-the subject for a completely different blog.

But whether you are reading and discussing the work of other writers, discussing your own work, or encouraging the work of fellow writers, we have the opportunity to learn about writing from a number of different perspectives.

Nobody succeeds in a vacuum. We need help from others. Studying- in whatever shape or form works for you-can help refine your writing skills. Writing takes practice and more than one reader.

If you want to get published, you work on a story until you get it right. And then you persistently keep sending it out, again and again.

Nothing is easy. But if you’ve written something you’re proud of, you’ve received your initial reward. Hopefully other people will read it too. Here are links to two pieces of mine that were published this month. A longer piece, “Is it Authentic?” in Across the Margin,and a flash piece in Frazzled Lit called “Shopping Day.”

Thank you for reading. f you enjoyed this post and want to support my writing, consider purchasing my little chapbook filled with short essays and poems.

Thanks again.

Originally published at http://nadjamaril.com on March 19, 2025.