Practice writing. Start your writing career. Learn hands-on in a community of great individuals!

Hi, you just arrived at the Free Write Camp. We’re a community of driven individuals who write for a living or want to start a writing career. I’m Alexander and make sure that everything works here. I know it’s your first day, so let me show you around the camp.

What is Free Write Camp?

An open education space for writers and people who want to learn to write. In a community of self-education practitioners, you learn in a constantly updated curriculum with practical exercises, real-world projects for non-profit organizations, hands-on tools (that you can also code yourself) and a great place to hang out with other writers and those wanting to write.

What’s the program like?

The program will be a mixture of written lectures, pre-defined exercises and homework-like assignments — in English (German later). In our virtual camp, you’ll learn in tents. Every tent has a different focus with a cool name, for example:

  • Storytelling Warrior, the basics for telling stories
  • Grammar & proper writing Houdini, proper English writing
  • Copywriting Circus, write texts that sell
  • Cinema Club, learn to write screenplays
  • Warm-up Gentleness, exercises to get your hands moving
  • Chaos Creator, forget about paradigms, grammar and rules, this is a sandbox/playground tent
  • Social media Sandbox, the content creation process in the age of connecting media (creating and promoting through content marketing and copywriting)
  • Email Elephant / Happy hippo, how to write proper emails
  • Formal Joseph / Hire Me, how to write when you apply for a job (CV, resume, letter of application)
  • Work it, baby!, learn to write job postings that can read thoughts, so the ideal fit for the position knows he’s/she’s the one
  • Mad Max, the psychology of writing and how your life becomes better through writing
  • L’Amour Toujours, the sexual, sensual and erotic aspects of writing

Starting in July 2017 I’ll be able to tell you more about the precise ingredients every tent will be built of. Think of a tent as a pile of knowledge, experience, practice and exchange. The more practice happens within a tent, the bigger and shinier it becomes. Like a good chef cooks meals with a heart will you build your tent with your efforts and passion.

Why is Free Write Camp for free?

I’m making the camp for free because I believe that the education for a basic skill like writing should be free of charge. There are too many not well-written texts out and people who don’t care writing bad texts and those who don’t care reading bad texts.

Free Write Camp is where you learn to write purposeful and excellent. I want Free Write Camp to become the best place to receive a free education for everyone who feels that writing does have a special magic — helping your business move forward, your private life to become more meaningful and your relationships to be more profound and stronger.

I’m a writer myself and I want to share what I learned during the years and teach what I know.

Join the Free Write Camp mailing list

You’ll hear from me as soon as things are moving forward here.

Write excellent. Write for people for who a status quo is too static. Write at Free Write Camp.

j j j

Travel + Work — A Failed Experiment (2014 edition)

Why traveling and working didn’t work out for me, the reasons behind and how to continue.

6 Months Traveling and Working

Since end of November 2013 I put myself into the position of working while traveling. It all sounds like a peanut butter or a piece of cake. At the end of April 2014 I found out for myself that it’s not even an little piece of cake. Here’s why:

You are barely or never in the moment. Nothing is worse and more frustrating, especially for fellow travelers, to have one person not paying attention. Because when you work on a project while you are geographically at the beach in the Philippines, you won’t be able to cope with both things — enjoying / relaxing and working — if you don’t keep them separated.

Don’t be rushy while you travel and work. Make sure you can stay in one place for a while, a week or so, so you can adjust and build up a little routine for your working hours.

It’s not healthy and prevents you, the by default distracted person, to stay sane when you think about projects (work) while you are at the most beautiful places in the world.

Conclusion

Clearly distinguish work and travel. You can work for 6 months, and travel for the other 6. You can travel for 3 months and work for 9 months. Or you can just work your way all the way through 2, 3, 4 or 5 years while you take your little breaks every three months or get 1 year off every 7 years like Stefan Sagmeister (from Sagmeisterwalsh) does.

But you don’t wanna merge both — just like a distinction of work and personal leisure time is crucial. Things will merge into each other anyway. Your effort must be put into reducing it [the merging process] to a sane level.

PS: This is old old standpoint of mine which I wrote (on May 6, 2014) because I also had a project that didn’t work out well while traveling. So I was double-frustrated about the unsuccessful project and me not being able to be mentally there with my travel partner. Right now, I found a way that works for me.

j j j