WD Presents: 5 WDU Courses, Self-Published Book Awards Extended 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 five WDU courses, the Self-Published Book Awards extended deadline, and more!

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Are you a beginner writer? Do you want to put pen to paper but have a case of writer’s block? Learn creative writing techniques to launch your writing and transform your ideas into your next story.

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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Have an amazing story idea, but need to learn the basics of how to write a book? Creating a story that is dynamic and engaging takes a lot more than just setting aside an hour every day to write.

This course will take you through all of the basics of writing a novel, including how important it is to choose a great setting, how to build characters, what point of view you should choose, how to write great dialogue, and more.

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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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In this course, you'll learn the difference between showing and telling and when it’s good to tell instead of show; how to balance showing and telling to create memorable characters and realistic, seamless dialogue; how the right mix of showing and telling can help you establish a powerful narrative voice; and so much more!

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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 Self-Published Book Awards is currently accepting submissions! This is the only Writer’s Digest competition exclusively for self-published books!

Extended Deadline: 6/1/23

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We're looking for literary agents and editors to join us in New York this summer for the Writer's Digest Annual Conference!

For nearly 15 years, the annual conference has inspired emerging writers through creative writing sessions, keynote speeches from bestselling authors, and more. We're proud to say many writing careers have begun at the WD Annual Conference.

We're so excited to grow this year's annual Pitch Slam—an opportunity for writers to pitch their manuscripts to agents—by adding even more agents to the roster. If you're an agent or an editor and you're interested in joining us this year for the Pitch Slam on Friday, August 18, please send us an email at writersdigestconference@aimmedia.com with your name, your agency (if applicable) along with "WD Annual Conference Pitch Slam" in the subject line, and we'll be in touch with more information!

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