Hello all!
Time for the #IWSG again!
August has been an especially busy month for me, what with organizing the merging of WEP with the IWSG for the purpose of joint writing challenges.
The inaugural August challenge is half over. We've had the sign ups on August 1, the posts on August 15, the winners announcement on August 26. The next post at WEP is the Guest Post. As well as winning an Amazon Gift Card, the winner, Tanya Miranda has been asked and agreed to write a guest post which is always a surprise treat.
If you'd like to keep in touch with what WEP/IWSG Writing Together challenges are up to, you can visit our site and subscribe to our email. If you have problems with that, email me and I'll add you manually.
On October 1, the new Halloween month challenge will go live and it's time to go through the process again.
It was great to see so many new writers join us in August. We hope even more of you will see the beauty of writing flash fiction, nonfiction and poetry to a prompt. Or taking the opportunity to get eyes on an extract of your WIP. Or just meeting a lovely, supportive bunch of writers to form new networks.
Alex's awesome co-hosts for the September 5 posting of the IWSG are Toi Thomas, T. Powell Coltrin, M.J. Fifield, and Tara Tyler!
Be sure to visit the
Insecure Writer’s Support Group Website!!!
Insecure Writer’s Support Group Website!!!
Now, to the month's question -
September 5 question for the IWSG- What publishing path are you considering/did you take, and why?
I went through the process of doing all the work myself and self-publishing with Amazon years ago just to see how it worked. It wasn't that hard, but it's not what I have planned for the future.
I'm no expert, but I'm following experts and have shared in previous posts how I plan to publish when I'm ready...under a pen name which will be no secret. I don't want to bore you by talking about myself - my least favorite topic - but for the interests of adhering to the IWSG question, here's my pre-planned publication process. You'll note it is self-publishing. I have a contemporary novel with Avon books, but may end up self-pubbing that too. I am going to:
1. Write several books for what is called 'fast launch'. Having 1 book out there doesn't do you any favors. You need to grow a backlist quick smart (which is hard for a slow, perfectionist writer) which is why I'm writing several before I hit PUBLISH, probably using my friends at Draft2Digital.
2. Buy the best covers I can afford. As I'm writing a paranormal romance series, (I'm up to Book Three) I need to arrange for all the covers to be made by the same artist so they look same-ish and stunning, of course. I have sketched them out...woo hoo.
3. Even though I'm a savvy editor myself, I work with 2 close critique partners mainly for plotting and structure which I suck at and have a great beta reader who's more like an editor but a fraction of the price. I'm the Grammar Police, Punctuation Police, Spelling Police, Sentence-structure Police and the Thought Police (sorry, doing 1984 with my students) in one package, but still believe in hiring good editors.
So, all these things cost money. Hopefully, down the track I'll see some return for the years of lackadaisical laptop joy - gosh I love alliteration don't I?
How about you, best-selling authors? I'd be interested in hearing your comments. Maybe you think I have rocks in my head. Maybe...who knows? We all make our own path in the end.
Have a great month, everyone!
If you like the challenge of a juicy horror, ghost, edgy, paranormal whatever story, or can find a way to write a 'normal' story or poem for this prompt, join WEP/IWSG Writing Together for the October challenge:
You're most welcome!
Denise
When this goes live, I'm up in Northern Queensland visiting family. I will return the visit when I can.
