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Vent: I blew $340 on a course that taught me nothing about finishing my own book
I want to warn people about paying for help before you even know what kind of help you need. About 14 months ago I signed up for a $340 online course that promised to get my half finished novel done in 90 days. It was all worksheets and pep talks and a private group where everyone talked about their ideas instead of writing them. I did every single module. I even printed the workbook at the library in Roseburg for 8 bucks. The course ended and my book was still sitting at chapter 4, exactly where it started. What actually worked was way cheaper and way less exciting: the free writers group at the library that meets on Thursdays, plus one guy named Dale who just reads my pages and says 'this part is boring.' So here is my real question for this group. How do you all figure out whether a project needs a tool, a person, or just 30 more minutes a day from you? Because I clearly got that call wrong.
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bettyh841d ago
Paid courses get a bad rap on here but sometimes the problem is not the course, it is that people buy one hoping it will do the work for them. Plenty of folks finish books using structured programs like that. The deadlines and the group and having someone to check in with can push you past chapter 4 when your Thursday library crowd and Dale just let you coast. A free group with no stakes is easy to skip, and a guy saying "this part is boring" is not the same as a plan. Maybe the course did not fail you, maybe you were not ready to use it, and that is a hard thing to hear.
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