WD Presents: 7 WDU Courses, Poetry Awards Deadline, and More!

There's always so much happening in the Writer's Digest universe that even staff members have trouble keeping up. As a result, we decided to start collecting what's on the horizon to make it easier for everyone to know what's happening and when.

This week, we're excited to announce seven WDU courses, our Poetry Awards deadline, and more!

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A key to success for any writer is having an online presence. Blogging is one way to share your expertise and—at the same time—build an author platform. Don’t know how to start a blog? Not sure what to focus on? Don’t fret! This online writing course will guide you through the entire blogging process—how to create and setup a blog, where to start, and much more. You’ll learn how to attract readers and how to market your writing. Start a successful blog today and get noticed by editors and publishers.

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Writing is your passion. Why not make it your day job, too? Whether you’re an aspiring screenwriter, novelist or playwright, or even just an avid reader, you can turn your love for words into a lucrative career as a professional copywriter. Learn how to become a copywriter by building your portfolio and marketing your services through this online workshop.

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When you take this online course, you’ll explore creative writing topics and learn how descriptive writing can breathe life into your characters, setting, and plot with Rebecca McClanahan’s Word Painting. Stretch your imagination, develop your creative writing skills, and express your creativity with this writing course.

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Throughout this four-week course, you will have feedback and support while you write and hone an entire short story from beginning to end, and you'll leave with a polished draft of your story. You will get insider information about what editors are looking for in short stories they choose to publish. Literary journals are always looking for quality stories, and with the advances in online submissions, getting your work in front of an editor has never been easier.

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This course pays special attention to the most notable form of online article writing: the blog posting. Publications of all types have enlisted the aid of bloggers to help disseminate information. Blogs incorporate characteristics from other article types—news, feature articles, and opinion pieces. Learning to write blog postings is a marketable skill, and the writer of online content should have a strong understanding of blogs. Finally, every writer should have her own blog whether associated with a publication or not; blogs are an integral facet of any viable platform.

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This course guides beginning and intermediate writers through elements of how to write a personal essay, helping them identify values expressed in their stories and bring readers into the experiences described. Writers learn how to avoid the dreaded responses of “so what?" and “I guess you had to be there" by utilizing sensory details, learning to trust their writing intuitions, and developing a skilled internal editor to help with revision.

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Picture books are one of the most delightful—and important—genres in all of literature. In this course, you'll learn how to write a winning picture book narrative, envision it with illustrations, and put together a picture package that a publisher will really notice.

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ENTER NOW! Writer’s Digest’s only competition exclusively for poetry, the Annual Poetry Awards, is currently accepting entries! Enter any poem 32 lines or fewer for your chance to win $1,000 in cash! Deadline to enter is November 1, 2022!

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Write a drabble—a short story of exactly 100 words—based on the photo prompt here. You can be funny, poignant, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story!

Email your submission to yourstorycontest@aimmedia.com with the subject line "Your Story 121."Entry Deadline: December 30, 2022

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