HWR Free Writing Courses (Opt-in)

You Have Stories Worth Telling. Let Me Show You What Makes Them Work.

Two free courses. One on fiction, one on non-fiction, that reveal why some writing grips readers from the first line, and why most doesn’t.

You Have Stories Worth Telling. Let Me Show You What Makes Them Work.

You’ve been writing for years now.

Two free courses. One on fiction, one on non-fiction, that reveal why some writing grips readers from the first line, and why most doesn’t.

In under an hour, you’ll see your own writing differently.

You’ve been writing for years now.

Maybe it started as journaling. Maybe late-night scribbling after the house went quiet. Maybe you’ve filled notebooks, started blogs, drafted chapters that sit unfinished on your laptop.

You have the words. 

You have the ideas. 

You have things you genuinely want to say.

But somewhere between your head and the page, something gets lost.

The writing feels… raw. Unfinished. Like it’s almost there but not quite.

You can’t put your finger on what separates writing that works from writing that just… exists.

If this sounds familiar, I made these courses for you.

Here’s what nobody tells aspiring writers:

The gap between “someone who writes” and “a writer whose work actually lands” isn’t talent. It isn’t vocabulary. It isn’t even how many hours you put in.

It’s that nobody ever showed you the invisible architecture underneath good writing.

You can feel when a story grips you. You know when an essay changes how you think. 

But you can’t quite reverse-engineer why.

So you keep writing in isolation. Restructuring the same piece over and over. Wondering if you’re improving or just rearranging deck chairs.

And that quiet question sits in the back of your mind:

Am I actually a writer? Or am I just someone who writes?

I’ve been where you are.

My name is Chetan Mahajan. My writing career started in an unlikely place—an Indian jail.

Wrongly imprisoned as the fall guy for my employer, I found myself surrounded by extraordinary stories. I’d always been a closet writer, so I started keeping a daily diary. That diary became my first book, The Bad Boys of Bokaro Jail, published by Penguin in 2014.

Since then, I’ve left the corporate world, moved to a village in the Indian Himalayas, and built the Himalayan Writing Retreat- where writers from five countries have come to work on their craft.

Through coaching dozens of writers, I’ve noticed something:

Most people don’t need more inspiration. They don’t need to “find their voice” (you already have one). They don’t need another pep talk about “just writing.”

What they need is to see what makes writing work.

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And that’s when your own writing starts to shift.

That’s why I created these two free courses.

Two Free Video Courses. One Clear Lens on Your Writing.

Course 1: What Makes Fiction Click A bird’s-eye view of story architecture. Why some fiction grips readers from page one, and why most manuscripts get abandoned after chapter three? Includes case studies of what works and why.

Course 2: What Makes Non-Fiction Land The craft of writing that changes minds. How to structure ideas so they don’t just inform but resonate. With examples of non-fiction that actually moves people.

Each course includes:

• Short, focused video lessons (30-45 minutes total)
• A PDF of recommended readings to go deeper
• My own hard-won insights from writing, coaching, and learning the craft the slow way

Plus:

• An invitation to join our free community of writers
• Occasional emails with new material, insights, and stories from the Himalayan Writing Retreat (no spam, I promise—just things I think you’ll find genuinely useful)

You’ve been writing long enough to know you have something to say.

Let me show you what makes it land.

You’ll receive both courses immediately, plus an invitation to our free writing community. I’ll also send occasional insights and stories—things I think you’ll genuinely enjoy. You can unsubscribe anytime.