Casting my eye back over all our blog posts from 2014, I'm astonished to see just how much we squeezed in, not only in terms of quantity, but also in range and depth. Over the next few posts, I'll be rounding up what we've covered during 2014 in the different strands of the blog – Writing, Publishing, Reaching Readers, etc – and sharing our blogging plans for 2015.
Today I'm looking back at our Thursday “Writing” strand. Every Thursday throughout 2014 we ran a fresh post on a specific aspect of Writing. Each post was penned by a different ALLi member (including authors, professional members and partner members), often giving rise to long conversations via the comments form and through social media sharing. Topics included:
- writing tips for beginners
- definitions of specific forms and genres
- editing issues, including the different types available and when to use them
- productivity – writing more words in the time available, via gizmos such as voice recognition software, popular techniques such as the snowflake method, or simply by focusing on numbers
- using your day job or life experience to fuel your writing
- specialising in specific genres or forms such as fan fiction, interactive fiction or serials
- diversifying, crossing or blurring genres to gain greater readership
- using beta readers or mentoring services to improve quality standards
- writing the best blurb for your book
- getting and staying focused/inspired/motivated/creative
- reviews of books, theories and events that guest bloggers had found particularly helpful
- broader questions such as why we write what we do and what makes the indie/self-publishing sector so special
It would be invidious to highlight just a few of these great posts here, so instead I'm providing a link that will enable you to see summaries of them all by scrolling down a few screens:
https://selfpublishingadvice.org/category/writing-advice-self-publishers/
Take a moment to catch up with any posts that you missed, and make the time to read or reread any whose headlines chime with your writing plans for 2015. I'm sure you'll find plenty to inform, inspire and motivate your new Writing year.
From the beginning of January, our Writing strand will move from its former Thursday slot to Wednesdays, to tie in with Twitter's popular #WritersWednesday / #ww hashtag. We're looking forward to another great year of sharing helpful posts about writing from some of the most motivated and interesting self-publishing authors around.
- If you're a member of ALLi and would like to write a guest post for us about Writing in 2015, please email Debbie[at]allianceindependentauthors.org.
- If you'd like to write a guest post but aren't yet an ALLi member, why not make 2015 the year that you join us? Find out more about how easy and affordable it is to join over on our website: www.allianceindependentauthors.org.
