OK, so I am a writer, a user and sender of words out to the world. One of my ways is via blog posts, another is the monthly newsletter I have printed and I distribute it to my nearest town (and other readers online. And I am a writer and poet, sharing my words through my published books.
At the moment though, I am being a novelist, writing a new book, I hope the first in a whole series of books. I have written about that on this site previously. I created a town (based in part on that town I produce the newsletter for). And I created characters, and some potential book titles and plot ideas.
I am slowly getting for of this first novel written (many more words to go though). But I had an idea about a way to garner more interest in my novel, might be to produce an anthology with short stories using that same setting, and same characters as are in my novel-in-progress.
To that end I have written a few short stories so far, including one that I sent off for a competition, and I enjoyed that process so much, I may well do the same thing next month and many months after that. (the competition is Furious Fiction, an Australian Writers’ Centre one, where they give several words, and rules, and 50 hours to write a piece of flack fiction (fewer than 500 words) with a prize of $500 for the winner.
It happens on the first weekend of every month, and when I saw the writing prompts, a story idea came to me, and I started writing my story, edited it down to meet the word limit, and sent it off. It was an easy process and enjoyable, so why not combine both my writing of this novel, as well as the writing of short stories about the town of Talloola, where my novel is set, and with the people I have already created for the novel?
So writing a novel, and looking at possible marketing of my ideas and the actual novel series are happening at the same time, and even though I have no idea if that first book in the series is likely to be picked up by a publisher, I’m having fun with this whole process, and having fun, hey, there’s nothing wrong with that!
So writing, and thinking about marketing are important things for the writer, and I am working at getting better and better about these aspects of my writing life. I’m also keen to talk about my writing, and to give workshops and presentations about writing in many forms.
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 