MOMoir

Interesting idea. Writers Digest online workshops are $319 for twelve weeks. Story Circle Network offers online classes for women and charges around $225 for six sessions. DailyOM has a an online story writing class, 12 weeks for $40. Gotham Writers Workshop courses are $400 for ten weeks. Prices are all over the map.

Some people believe you get what you pay for, others believe free is good. Some teachers are comfortable charging high fees, others don't want the stress of having to live up to the expectations that go with charging high fees.

I've been listening to A Conversation About the Writing Life between Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg. Both of those women teach, and you pay dearly for the privilege of studying with them. And, get this, at one point in the conversation, it came out that neither one of them studied writing in any formal way. They just wrote. They wrote a lot! And they both read a lot.

I should add that support groups of one sort or another are really helpful for writers. Some like face-to-face, but it's hard to find a writing group with the right chemistry among members. Online groups can be great, but tend to get chatty and/or fizzle. Classes are excellent, because they are for a finite time. Once in awhile, you can find the nucleus of an ongoing group as a spin-off from a class, whether classroom or online.

So for those who can afford these Momoir classes, they may be a godsend. Sticking to your writing with tots around? Perhaps the biggest challenge I can imagine, and group accountability could make the crucial difference.