Sometimes, saying what you want to say takes more than a few hundred words. Explore longform writing in Writing 201: Beyond the Blog Post, starting December 1.
We often think of blog posts as being just a few paragraphs long, or being a “less serious” kind of writing. Not so! In this challenge, we’ll focus on writing longform pieces that are equally at home on your blog or in a magazine. Whether you have trouble organizing your thoughts in longer pieces of writing or simply want to challenge yourself as a blogger, Writing 201: Beyond the Blog Post can help.
What is Writing 201: Beyond the Blog Post?
What does “longform” mean? That depends on what you think it is, but we generally use it to refer to writing that’s 1500 words or more.
Writing 201: Beyond the Blog Post is a four-week course to help those beginning to explore longer-form writing (or who are frustrated with their past attempts). Each week, we’ll focus on a different kind of piece, working our way from interviews — one of the easiest ways to get started with longer pieces — through instructional pieces and opinion pieces, ending with a personal essay. It’s the product of a range of writers and editors, including the founders and editors at Longreads — folks who know a thing or two about high word counts.
The course doesn’t have “assignments.” Publish a draft on Monday, a work-in-progress on Thursday, a new post on Saturday, or even commentary on the writing process. Don’t publish at all, or submit your piece to an online magazine. What you publish and how is up to you.
For those who’ve never worked with other writers before or are scared to open your work up for feedback, don’t worry! We’re a friendly bunch, and we’ll offer tips on workshopping before getting started.
The most important part isn’t our advice, but the feedback you offer one another. As with all Blogging U. courses, you’ll have a private community space, the Commons, where we encourage you to workshop your writing. Workshopping is all about collaborative brainstorming: share excerpts from pieces you’re working on or links to your published pieces, ask focused questions, and provide critique. You offer specific, constructive feedback to others, and they do the same for you.
The nuts and bolts
- Writing 201: Beyond the Blog Post begins on Monday, December 1.
- New workshops are published at 12:00 AM GMT on Mondays. Each one helps you create a new longform piece of writing — interview, instructional, opinion, and personal essay/memoir. (And since you’ll get your final workshop on December 22, you can wrap up in time for the year-end holidays.)
- There are no posting requirements; the emphasis is on exploring new forms and workshopping your material. Publish your work when and where you’d like.
- Participants will have a private community site, the Commons, for workshopping, chatting, and connecting with others. Daily Post and Longreads staff and happiness engineers will be on hand to answer questions and offer guidance.
- This course is completely free and open to bloggers and writers from any platform.
Note: this is not a course about blogging, it’s a focused writing workshop. If you’re interested in learning to blog or developing your existing blog, you’ll want to try our Blogging 101 and 201 courses — Blogging 101 will be back in January.
How to register
Want to join? Fill out the form below to register. You’ll receive an email before the course begins with instructions on how to access the Commons. Thanks for joining us!
Registration for this course is now closed. To learn about future Blogging U. courses, just follow The Daily Post!
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Cool! Can’t wait!
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My first Bloggin U course!
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Exciting! I just finished a personal essay writing class which actually inspired me to start blogging again, so this will be a good continuation of that experience. Can’t wait!
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I’ve been blogging a year, and have picked up a few followers, but I tend to want to talk about everything, so I might be a bit hard to follow, without categories. This class will fit in great, right before I start a history course at Oklahoma University on January 12th.
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As I noted to a few others, this is really a writing workshop — it’s not going to teach you about blogging, organizing your blog, or attracting followers. For that, be on the look out for our Blogging 101 and 201 challenges.
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Looking forward to learning about blogging
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FYI, this course won’t teach you about blogging specifically — it’s just focused on writing. If you want something blogging-focused, Blogging 101 will be back in January.
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How do you register for this course, Writing 201?
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There’s a short form embedded right in this post — just fill it out.
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I couldn’t figure out what it was! I clicked on the link at the bottom, but a “security clearance failure sign popped up?
I’ll check again!
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I figured it out! Thanks!
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This is wonderful. Thank you for fueling creativity. The more writing workshops the better, hats off!
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Sounds like a great way to learn about blogging. Sign me up.
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As I just noted to someone else, this course won’t really teach you about blogging — it’s focused on writing. If you want something blogging-focused, Blogging 101 will be back in January.
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I’ve been getting back into writing again so I’m pretty excited, can’t wait!
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Looking forward to this!
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Can’t wait to take this course. No newbie to blogging but there’s always so much more to learn!
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michelle,
are there any basics people should refresh if they weren’t in writing 201?
also, caught a typo from the 3rd paragraph – “a work-in-progress ion Thursday”
thanks
-i.m.
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This is a stand-alone course; it doesn’t depend on or require having taken any other writing challenges.
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Michelle I want to sign up but I’m getting an error. Can you send it to vbhaircolor@aol.com. Thank you!
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just put wrong address in survey. it should be laureatelouise.wordpress.com
Anyway i love the thought of writing a longer piece.
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No worries, but thanks for letting me know 🙂
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Sounds very interesting. I look forward to sharpening my writing skills during this course.
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I lost momentum on the last blogging U exercise…just too many things going at once. Timing is everything… Will try again and see what the Lord does with my brain.
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I’m new at writing and I haven’t quite found my style/voice. Looking forward to learning.
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You’re more than welcome to join, but you might also want to wait for our next Writing 101 course — this challenge is focused specifically on longform writing. Writing 101 has a much stronger focus on exploring and developing your voice.
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Dear Michelle,
It’s a really nice idea and I am pretty interested to join. Would you tell in specific how to join the course? i just don’t get the way to be in.
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There’s a short form right in the post you just commented on — fill it out. You may need to be at a computer, if you’re not seeing it on your phone/tablet
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Hoping this helps me to re-focus on my blogging and writing style.
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This would definitely help me expand my knowledge on blogging. I can’t wait to start the course. Thank you for the opportunity!
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You’re more than welcome to join, but be aware that this is a writing-focused workshop that won’t necessarily teach you much about blogging. Another Blogging 101 course will begin in January, though.
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Oh I must’ve mixed it up. I would still participate.
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Is it FREE???
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Sounds great! 🙂
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long read means minimum how many words? you mean to make draft and give link in commons and publish the post only on saturday? That means only 3 posts?
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There’s no minimum — we’re not going to count your words — but as noted in the post, we usually take a longform piece to be at least 1500 words. We’ll work through four different pieces, and there are no publishing deadlines. This is more of a workshop than a course with specific assignments.
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ok. noted. can choose my own title and prompt, thats good.
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This sounds fantastic! Looking forward to it
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Does a comment count as a sign-up?
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Nope — to sign up, fill out the short form that’s right at the end of this post.
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Thank you all so much.
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The signup form doesn’t show in the WordPress iphone app. I had to go to a browser to see it.
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I am new in writing. Dunno exactly what and how to write. I would like to learn about how to blog and how organise the blog and exactly what to write .
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You might find one of our 101 courses to be more useful, then — this won’t really address either of those. Blogging 101 will be back in January.
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Looking forward to this!
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thanks a lot, hope this course improve my writing skills.
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I’ve been waiting for this course. I thought I’d have to wait until this next June. I’m really glad you decided to do one now.
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FYI, this is not the same Writing 201 we did over the summer. If you’re interested in that one, we’ll be running it again early in 2015.
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I like this, come again!
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