Category: Newsletter

by Helen Lowe So here’s the thing: I don’t believe blogging is a marketing tool for writing—and certainly not on its own, i.e. without some other force driving readership to the blog. If anything, my view is that more often than not it is one’s writing that drives readers to the blog, rather than the other way about. The exception would be the person who is already a social media personality or an established identity in another field, whether it is entertainment, politics, or simply an ‘other life’ as a… | Read More...

by Beaulah Pragg The question of whether to blog, as an author, is a big one and I’ll let people far more qualified than myself tackle it. I chose to have a blog because I wanted to update people on my book progress, share writing tips and interviews with other authors, and generally express who I am as a person. If you decide, for whatever reason, that having a blog is something you would like to do, then this article will help you chose between some of the best free…

By A.J. Fitzwater While the general mechanics of submitting specfic short stories is mostly universal and easily Google-able (do read the submission guidelines for each venue!), submitting from New Zealand and finding a venue that appreciates a kiwi voice is a harder task. Firstly, the mechanics. While printing a physical manuscript and snail mailing it across thousands of miles of ocean may seem an obsolete task in the days of instant internet communication, there are still a few venues that don’t do electronic submissions. Thankfully these are a tiny minority,… | Read More...

By Stephen Minchin So your novel or short story collection is finished. You’ve written, rewritten, hidden it in the bottom of a drawer for a few months and then gone over it again. Your friends, family, and cat have all read it and offered feedback, and now you’re sick of it, and it’s as good as it’s going to get, and you’ve decided to send it out to a publisher to see if they’ll bite. What now, you ask. What indeed… Finding a suitable publisher Your first step is finding… | Read More...

by Mike Reeves-McMillan Back in the mid-90s, I was an editor for what was then Hodder Moa Beckett Publishers. We got manuscripts of, let’s say, varying quality, and it was my job to fix them up to a professional standard. (Some of the worst ones came from journalists, by the way.) I developed a mantra for editing: “Always check everything, even the things you think are right.” I’m not naturally a detail-oriented person, but following that principle helped me to turn out consistent quality work. Even if you’re hiring an… | Read More...

by Darian Smith Of all the inhabitants of the literary schoolyard, Revision is the writer’s best frenemy. When you finally type “the end” and lean back in your chair, relishing the rush of accomplishment that comes from a finished story, it’s Revision who smiles smugly and says: “That’s really good. Now we have to fix it.” And while you know that’s absolutely true, and that revising and rewriting will help turn your words into something beautiful and – ideally – sellable, there is a moment, when Revision first appears to… | Read More...

By Ripley Patton Writing is a lot like gardening. There are things that pop up that you want, and things that you don’t. There are plants that will feed you or provide beauty for your home. And there are weeds that must be yanked out by the roots to make room for the good stuff. But it isn’t always easy to recognize the weeds, especially when you’re the one that’s planted them in your own writing. Here is a list of things I have learned to weed out of my fiction. 1 – References to… | Read More...

by Cassie Hart A novel is a big undertaking. In fact, the sheer size and word-count can seem daunting, not to mention the number of hours it takes to write the first draft, the second, the third, or however many you might need to get it ready for submission. However, it’s a worthwhile endeavour, and if you’ve been writing short stories for a while it is possible to make the transition to writing novels. Here are a few ways in which I’ve found a background of writing short stories can… | Read More...

by Ripley Patton So, you’ve finished that novel and polished it up and now it’s time to start querying agents. Just as writing takes craft and skill, querying takes a different set of abilities and talents. It isn’t as easy as it first appears. Like novel writing, querying is a process. It is a quest. And like any heroic quest it helps to get some magical help from a mentor or wise-one before you set out on your adventure. I’m only at the beginning of the query quest myself, but… | Read More...