Tag: (book) Write Good

Video: Beginnings

Erin Penn

NaNoWriMo is happening. As announced on Oct 31st with my special song, I am participating again. So far I am at 34K of the 50 goal.  If I was on track, I would be at 41K – but I’ll take 34,000 words. That isn’t a bad month’s production and there are still 5 days left. The “novel” I am attempting is UFOs – not science fiction, but Unfinished Objects. Writings started and abandoned.

A big part of this has been getting my blog in order. I am super caught up, though not completely caught up. Soon, though, soon. Related is expanding certain categories of the blog into things. The Write Good book series based off of the writing exercises. Finishing the AtoZ stories from April, into their collection of the Small Courages of Giants. Getting the flashes in order for actual expansion into short stories and books, and in response to requests on patreon for more if people are willing to throw money at the idea. And, most important, dealing with the fact I no longer have a backlog of flashes for my Sunday posts. 

That is going to be a challenge going forward. I’m thinking my 2020 posts, at least initially will be – first week, expanding old flashes; second week, digging up old and new D&D campaign stories where I wrote things up in detail; and then third week new text flashes and four week new visual flashes with the fifth Sunday being the long flash. Plus, if the patreon (https://www.patreon.com/erinpenn) gets some people, I’ve promised unique-to-them Flash expansions and ongoing bits from my work-in-progress. Hopefully that will really kickstart my writing. I seem to do better when I feel obligations.

This level of output has done well this month. I don’t know if it is sustainable. I got a year to test it out.

Finally for the expanding certain categories of the blog, I’ve been bouncing around the idea in my head and with friends about maybe, sort-of bringing my Editing Rants to video format.

(Aiii!, while writing this I got my first patreon … Hi, Bruce. Thank you!)

Anyway, I made a thing as part of NaNoWriMo. Hope this entertains and informs.

 

 

Other Cool Blogs: Just Publishing Advice Nov 2, 2016

Erin Penn

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.