I’d Rather Be Writing - Tom Johnson

Free online writing courses – Amy Quinn sent me a link to 50+ Open Courseware Writing Classes from the World’s Leading Universities. It’s quite a collection of free online writing classes, many from MIT. If you’re looking to learn to write, it’s a resource worth checking out. In these 50 free writing classes, there aren’t too many on technical writing, but I’ve always felt that being a writer comes first, and learning a technical style comes second. For something more geared towards technical writing, check out the Wikiversity’s section on Technical Writing.

Amy, it looks like you forgot to add a website I built long ago as a composition instructor in Egypt: “How to Write an Essay — 10 Easy Steps.” I left Egypt in 2004, and since then the site has grown from about 3,000 hits (mostly from my students) to 1,895,444 random hits. Holy smokes, nearly two million.

Part of the reason for its popularity is because at the time I was into SEO, and I totally SEO’d the heck out of the title page. Now if you google steps + essay you see it first on the list.

By the way, SEO is critical to blog visibility. Much to my amazement, 80% of my blog’s traffic comes from Google, and only about 20% from regular readers. If you use WordPress, definitely install this SEO plugin so you can tweak your titles.

Alas, in rereading the title page of my composition site, I see that becoming a technical writer has made my writing style more flat and plain.

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Tags: free writing courses online, online courses

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