New year, new blog series (plural)

I’m already planning ahead to the new year, mostly because I have to do some planning in order to keep on top of everything. And now is the time I’m also thinking ahead to some new series (plural) on the blog.

Publishing challenge

First of all, there’s the publishing challenge I wrote about on Friday. I’m going to write a series of blog posts about the way I do it and my experiences along the way. When the challenge is complete, I’ll bundle the blog posts together into an ebook. And when the ebook is published, the posts will disappear from the blog.

Some authors leave their blog posts up after they’ve been collated, and others don’t. The main problem with that is that if you want to self-publish, through whatever channel, and distribute to Amazon, then Amazon doesn’t like it if material is ‘freely available’ on the internet.

Personally, I think it’s my business, and I will argue the toss with Amazon over that clause, particularly as I’m not ‘licensing’ them to publish the material or enrolling in their exclusive Kindle Unlimited. That would be different. But I also don’t want to sell an ebook when someone else can get the material free. So I tend to take the blog posts down once the ebook is about to be published.

My blog posts are generally duplicated on Medium, but for the same reasons, I’ll be taking them down once the ebook is published. And in order to do that nicely, I’ll be reproducing the blog posts in my own publication there rather than in someone else’s, as it’s a bit rude to have them publish something and then remove it further down the line.

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Diary of a Tiger

Another new series I’m starting in January is Diary of a Tiger. I already have Diary of a Scaredy Cat: a year in the life of a frightened writer, and I’m in the process of finishing Diary of a Pussycat: a year in the life of a freelance writer. So Diary of a Tiger: a year in the life of a fearless writer will round that series of writers’ guides up nicely. (Do you see the theme?)

These writers’ guides have a weekly diary over the course of a year, but the added value to the book is that each weekly entry has a set of 5 practical exercises for the reader to try too.

Weekly writing prompts

As I want to populate Words Worth Reading with a new novella, a new series episode and two new short stories every issue, I need to write at least three new short stories (including the episode) and one new novella per quarter, as well as one new novel a year.

For the short stories, I want to write on topics that are, well, topical. And so the weekly writing prompts will return. Some will be topics or anniversaries that I’ve chosen, while others will be my ‘throwaways’.

Book reviews

A series that I won’t be publishing in the future is the book reviews. I did start 52 Books in 52 Weeks which was 52 writers’ guides that I reviewed. But I stalled at about Book 48. I want to finish that off and then publish it as a free guide. Free because, well, they’re book reviews. And I’ll leave those up on the blog.

The NetGalley book reviews are already re-used all over the place and recently I’ve joined the ranks of reviewers for Pen & Sword Books and Sapere Books. These are the reviews that I won’t be publishing as a standalone book, but some of them will appear in Words Worth Reading. Book reviews will still be posted on the blog, however.

My writing life

Finally, for now, over on Vocal, I’ve started writing about my own writing history. This consists of anecdotes that always go down well when I’m speaking to other writers and at events.

The first instalment was accepted by Vocal’s ‘confessions’ community in the ‘workplace’ slot last week.

If they don’t accept it as a series, then I’ll shift it to Medium. Vocal stories aren’t behind a metered paywall, so it’s unlikely that I’ll ever distribute any ebook filled with material from there to Amazon.

‘Publication Day’ posts

I’ve been posting publication day posts every week since the end of October, and those will carry on as part of the publishing challenge posts, which started yesterday.