I took a creative writing course as part of the master’s degree program I started a few years ago. (In the interest of full disclosure, I did not finish my master’s degree because of the expense).

The class wasn’t a bad class. I just thought I would be doing more writing than I did. I did do a lot of writing but I also did a lot of analyses–of texts and poems. To a great degree, it felt like an undergrad class (one assignment was to find all of the literary elements in a 25-page poem).

Recently, I signed up to audit the Creative Writing classes offered by Coursera and I think I’ve learned more in the past week than I did in my master’s class. The classes are offered by Wesleyan professors and many of them are alumni of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. The information presented in the videos has been instructive and I have a greater understanding of certain elements of fiction writing. The same elements that make me nervous when I attempt fiction.

This is not a paid advertisement for Coursera. Just my very happy and pleasantly surprised endorsement of a program that you can learn from– whether you pay for it or not.