Building a “Write with AI” course

Yes, another one… Build Log #1

Every writing course I loved has vanished, but the lessons they left behind are too good not to share.

I was really bummed when online writing courses kept closing down.

Write of Passage, the course that propelled me to publish here every week, shut last fall. This was the program that introduced me to the writing community online - one that looked very different from when I was on Blogger in elementary school and even my college stint on Medium. I loved the course so much that I stayed on as an editor. I made some of my best creative friends through there and then through my writing.

I credit a lot of my writing practice, craft, and process to WOP. The course may not exist anymore, but editing 200+ essays has really cemented the winning elements of online writing in my brain.

But more crucially, this was the course that I sent many of my friends to whenever they say “I want to start writing again but I don’t know how”. This was the solution, or at least I thought it provided a solid framework to the solution. The course didn’t just teach about writing, but it taught frameworks around distribution, around putting together a hook that appeals to an average internet reader, into crafting a story that highlights a person’s unique voice. A story that only they can write.

Understandably, AI became so prevalent in the world of writing that the curriculum for Write of Passage had to be completely rewritten. But before they could do that, they shut the course down.

I tried to find another writing home on the internet. I was trying to learn about this AI thing, especially because I ws a bit late to the game. It was January, and ChatGPT could write much better prose than it could when it first entered the internet vernacular and subsequently became the fastest adopted consumer tech of all time.

Kelly Davis

told me about this course called Write with AI, offered by Every’s Evan Armstrong. I took the course in February and was once again blown away by what I learned. I didn’t get the same community experience (it was a much smaller course than WOP) but the course introduced different ways to use AI to supplement my writing.

But before I could start sending people over to the course, Write with AI closed.

I’m starting to feel a bit restless with all the information, teachings, and learnings that I’ve gathered. I’ve absorbed them all, revisited them time and time again, and have moulded them into ways that work for me.

The results of my weekly practice is not so much in the number of subscribers, but more so in 100+ weeks of consecutive writing, the relationships I’ve cultivated since writing online, and — my current job working for one of the biggest creators on the internet.

I thought about just sharing my writing process. I’ve already written about this a bunch. I thought about screen-recording my process. A low lift given how much I’ve fallen in love with Looms.

But once I started listing out what I could share, I saw the list for what it is:

A curriculum.

I never dreamed of building a course, but if I were to start one, I had always admired what Proko did with their Drawing Basics course. For each module, there was a Level 1 (for beginners), and a Level 2 (for advanced students that are revisiting the foundations). There were even different homework assignments for both. I thought that made the course extra valuable.

So I started mapping out my list for three tracks: beginner, intermediate, advanced. I placed myself in the intermediate, remembering that a lot of my ex-colleagues called me very tech-savvy. I really don’t think so, but this just reminds me that a lot of people probably don’t spend their waking hours in Notion the way I do.

With the help of ChatGPT, the course will look something like this:

I probably won’t keep it this way exactly. But it’s exciting to see what a course mapped out could look like. I can already envision myself building this course, recording one Loom at a time, each module being ~10mins or less.

There are many aspects of the course that I haven’t thought through. The name is one. “Write with AI” is clear and great but 1) Every took that name, 2) Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole have a Substack with that name, and 3) Paul Millerd also has a course within his community with that name. I’m tinkering with “Prompt to Publish”, though the value proposition for that is less clear.

Distribution is another major one. I like the idea of it being free, but also know that a free course means that it’s perceived at a lower value by viewers and therefore people may not be as incentivised to follow through with a curriculum that is designed to be followed through. But I’m also uncomfortable with paywalls and charging for stuff (note: bring this up in therapy). But

Bhav Sharma

, whom I lovingly sent a Loom about this just a few hours ago, told me to not worry about this yet and just focus on building the course and the Looms first.

Another worry I have is doing too much. At the moment my biggest personal projects are revising my Bite-Sized Creativity book, launching my Cheat at Your Job essay series. I also just started a podcast, am working on bigger writing pieces, levelling up my photography, learning how to vibe-code…

But I do like dabbling in many projects. It’s fun. And I know that the kind of person I am is one that doesn’t necessarily need to time block stuff because I will get what I want to get done done by the time it needs to get done. And since nothing is truly urgent, I’m just following my curiosities and impulses and have fun building things.

Plus, isn’t the point of being able to create things is to make something you wish to see in the world that doesn’t exist yet? And I want to have a space that I can send people to when they ask “How do you write online?” and “How do you write with AI?”. What better way to show them that than by building something myself.

So, it comes down to this: I’m building a course. Hoping to record one of the tracks (beginner/intermediate) within the next week. More details to come.

Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://calendly.com/beckyisj/

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