(Updated on 9/13/2010 @ 6:31 p.m. with correct info for classes offered by Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.)

It’s September and kids from kindergarten to college are headed back to the classroom.

This time of year, that back-to-school feeling is hard to escape, even if you finished your formal education years ago.

So why not just go with it, and sign up for a class or two to improve your skills and help your writing business.

Here’s a list of places that offer writing or other classes online; some are open only to members, which means you’ll need to subscribe to that professional organization in order to sign up.

Knight Digital Media Center - This journalism training partnership between USC Annenberg and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism offers some online training materials in support of the week-long on-site seminars the schools run for working journalists. Categories include reporting, audio, video, photography, and more.

Knowledgewebb – Online training site Knowledgewebb focuses on training journalists about the tech tools they need to do their jobs, and not just to work for digital publications. Subjects range from basics such as math for journalists to planning your first multimedia story to more sophisticated subjects including content management systems, databases and getting more traffic to your website or blog. To see what you’re getting for your money, Knowledgewebb offers four sample classes you can take for free, including 50 Ways to Improve Your Blog and Workflow for Online Editorial Content. Classes are available to members only. Annual subscription is $129 a year, although generous discounts are available to members of affiliate organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists, Online News Association, ReligonWriters.com, Freelance Success and others.

Mediabistro – The virtual community for freelancers runs online and on-demand courses and webinars, and offers one of the greatest range of topics out there, including staples such as Bootcamp for Journalists and Travel Writing Boot Camp. Mediabistro has literally dozens of courses slated to start in in the next couple weeks – but don’t worry if you miss the one you want, it’s bound to repeat sometime in the not too distant future. Some online classes are under an hour, others last several hours and others span the course of several weeks. Costs vary. Subscribers to Mediabistro’s AvantGuild inner circle get discounts on classes, but classes are open to all.

News University – This e-learning program is run by Poynter Institute, the non-profit journalism training organization that also owns and publishes the St. Petersburg Times. In addition to online training, News U. also offers webinars and in-person training, and you don’t need to be a member of any particular organization to sign up. Right now, News U. is asking freelancers to participate in an online survey to come up with subjects for a series of online writing webinars the organization plans to launch in 2011; participating writers get 50 percent off registration for one webinar plus $10 off an online class on stopping writer’s block that takes place this Thursday, Sept. 16.

Online News Association – This professional organization for staff and freelance digital journalists at all kinds of publications doesn’t offer much of its own online training, though members receive discounts on classes from News U. and Knowledgewebb. However, the group plans to use some of the $75,000 in grant funding it received recently to expand its own online training. If you live in Washington D.C. or plan to be there in late October, don’t miss ONA10, the organization’s annual conference, which crams as much digital-media training into two days as you could possibly hope for. In case you need more convincing, here’s a recap from last year’s conference.

Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism – The seven-year-old business journalism training program says 9,000 writers have taken its courses. The center, physically located at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, offers a variety of live and on-demand online training – all focused on how to do a better job of covering a business beat. Upcoming webinars include: Developing Business Angles on Any Beat (Sept. 14) and Think Like Google: What You Need to Know about SEO (Oct. 19).

Writer’s Digest University – The online training branch of Writer’s Digest Magazine offers training for writes in all genres, including magazine writing, fiction, poetry and technical writing. The next sets of multi-week, online workshops begin Sept. 16 and 23. Right now anyone who signs up for a workshop gets a free WD on-demand webinar on DIY publishing.

Olympic athletes aren’t born doing those things. With the rare exception, it takes years, maybe even decades, to reach that level of achievement – something spectators like you and me understand almost intuitively.

Yet when it comes to our work as writers, we expect to come out of the gate a Nicholas Kristoff or Seymour Hersh.

But writing, like sports, doesn’t work that way. To attain a certain level of mastery takes time and effort. While it might not take the 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell says it does in Outliers, it’s not something you can start out at and be perfect right away (unless you’re a J.D. Salinger, and face it, we’re not).

Good writing takes hard work. To be an Olympic caliber writer takes Olympic caliber training.

So how do you train like a gold-medal champion?

Specialize. You don’t see Apollo Anton Ohno competing in short-track speed skating and figure skating. Ohno’s a champion because he’s devoted umpteen years of his life to one thing and one thing only, and that devotion’s made him the most decorated American Winter Olympian ever. To get good at something specialize. If you want to be a business reporter, pitch and take assignments to write business stories. If you want to be a copywriter, actively seek out copywriting opportunities. Ditto for any other niche writing market.

Find a coach. Watch the Olympic figure skaters before and after they enter the rink. There’s always a coach there to encourage them before they’re on and critique them once they’re done. Writers need coaches too. You could hire a coach, but you don’t have to. Coaching could come from attending a writer’s workshop, reading books on the craft, or putting some really good writing blogs on your RSS reader (including this one, hopefully).

Practice. Olympic athletes are in the spotlight once every four years, but they practice constantly. Practice is what allows U.S. snowboard superpipe champ Shaun White to do tricks like the Double McTwist 1260, which he invented and so far has been the only rider to have landed successfully. Thankfully, practicing writing is a little easier than doing double flipping, triple twisting maneuvers on a snowboard – although getting a reluctant interviewee to open up sometimes feels like it. The best practice for writers is writing. If assignments aren’t pouring in, aim your writing energies at query letters, keeping a journal, blogging or taking a writing class – anything that helps sharpen your skills.

Use the right equipment. Bode Miller didn’t win a bronze medal in the downhill on any old pair of skis. He used the right equipment and tuned it to the conditions on the mountain that day. To get the most out of their work, writers need equipment that’s tuned to their special needs too: a laptop that has enough umph to be a main workstation yet is light enough to take on the road, a telephone headset and Skype, a smartphone with a built-in camera, software for making podcasts.

Surround yourself with like-minded professionals. Skiers on the World Cup circuit travel, train and live together – U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn‘s chief nemesis on the World Cup circuit is also her best friend, Germany’s Maria Riesch. This is a hard one for me, because it’s against my naturally competitive nature to want to share too much with writers who could potentially take work away from me. But the reality is, there’s no way I could write all the stories there are to write about topics I cover. So why not accept that and spread the wealth? And good karma has a way of finding its way back to you.

Visualize greatness. Olympic athletes train mentally as well as physically, picturing themselves performing at their peak. When I was 15 my parents sent me to a weekend seminar led by a local high-school football coach whose specialty was teaching athletes how to visual success. Over two days we learned what affirmations were and how to use positive mental imagery to picture ourselves doing whatever it was we wanted to do. Sounds hokey but it works, especially the visualization. I’ve continued to use some of the techniques up to this day. If you think of yourself as a successfully employed freelance writer, you will be. That doesn’t mean that all you have to do is think about it. You have to do the things that will make you successful – the querying, the interviews, the writing, the rewriting.  But by picturing yourself as successful you won’t be mentally sabotaging everything else you’re doing to get there. And when you’ve got that big interview or have a call with an editor at your dream magazine you’ll be calm, cool and collected because you’ve been there before, in your head.

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If the Olympics inspire you, you might want to check out the Pen Olympics now going on at Edittorent, another blog for writers. There’s a new competition every day – Monday’s was Doggerel Sled Racing.

Today’s topic: Tips For Improving Your Writing

25 tips for better freelance writing – Never go into an interview cold. Don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions. Show, don’t tell. Use active verbs. Read the whole story for more.

Asking the hard question: top 10 interview tips – Don’t back down from asking hard questions. Here’s how.

A few words on writing short – 500 words on why every writer needs to master the 500-word story, and suggestions how to do it.

How to write fast – The faster you write, the higher your hourly rate and the better your earnings potential. Read how the pros do it.

To keep business, tech writing fresh avoid cliches – Like the plague. Ha ha.

How to handle rewrites without wanting to kill yourself – Nobody likes rewrites, but they’re a fact of freelance life. The best way to handle rewrites is to just do it.

Later this week:

Tomorrow: Best blogs for writers

Friday: Career development for freelancers