Cover by Erin Penn
If you were around in November, you may have noticed how my novel for NaNoWritMo went south. All October I thought and thought about Internal Lies based on a dream I had during the 2016 holiday season, carefully not writing a word down. I jumped on the computer on November first and typed up all the notes I had from the original dream – close to 1,000 words.
Then nothing on the second.
On the third my brain said “Let’s write a blog post.”
Now? Really? You haven’t wanted to work on the blog but in bits and pieces all year and you want to do one now. … Oh well, at least it is writing.
Yeah. The result? Nearly “won” NaNoWritMo by catching up on my blog – 35,568 words of blog postings. This was the most productive writing period I have ever done outside of writing Honestly. Actually more so, since Honestly is only 15K.
Anyway, I’ve long been thinking about maybe doing a collection of my flashes or putting the writing exercises together for something I can sell on Amazon. You can even see a cover above made for the Writing Exercises. The challenge is transforming the blog into a coherent how-to. Like taking a novel and changing it to a movie, the mediums of blogging and ebooks are different with different requirements.
“How to Turn Your Blog Into a Book” by Julie Petersen (2016) and updated by Derek Haines (2017) on the Just Publishing Advice website gives some excellent advice I plan to use. If you are thinking about going this route with your blog, you might want to review it as well. While focused primarily on non-fiction, the biggest take-aways are reaching new readers, monetize your work without turning your website into advertising central, and hiring professionals for the professional bits.
Look for the four book series on Writing Exercises to come out this year: Write Good a taste, Write Good, Write Gooder, and Write Goodest.