Hello fellow writers and festive greetings to you. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I like to give some useful links for your writer’s stocking at this time of the year, and here they are. Over 11,000 of you are enrolled on my Udemy courses now, and I’d like to thank Udemy and you for this opportunity.
Most of you are on the Complete Freelance Writing Course and in this, I divide writing up into: good writing, versatile writing and profitable writing. So let’s use these categories in our stocking.
Good Writing
If you’re a science fiction and fantasy fan, you may well know Brandon Sanderson’s work. But you may not know that he also hosts a free writing course, with 13 lectures on storytelling, world building, characters and publishing. Hosted by Brigham Young University on You Tube, this could be just the thing to get out of clearing up after a family celebration…a course you just have to finish!
Versatile Writing
None of you lovely students have mentioned that you did namowrimo this year, but perhaps you chose wisely to keep quiet about it. I did a watered-down but most effective version here, where we wrote together every morning for half an hour, from 8.15 am. Anchoring is the best word I can come up with to describe it. I think it reconnected all of us with the joy of writing for its own sake, with inner critics turned off. And we got into a state of collective flow, or team mind, which was blissful.
For some weird reason, I chose to write a play, which despite having a first degree in drama, I’ve never done. Play writing has a lot of rules, so it was a steep learning curve. But it made me think a lot about how writing is dramatic or not…whatever its form. More on this soon.
One of the best ways to grow more versatile as a writer, I suspect, is to listen to podcasts. Here are a couple of suggestions, the second link of which is gianormous. Dip in, see what you like the sound of, and whether it offers you inspiration.
https://nybookeditors.com/2023/07/the-best-writing-podcasts/
So is podcasting writing? Well, the poetry podcast I co-create involves research, some very clear formatting and points to include in its preparation – I’d probably describe it more as structure than a script.
Earlier this year, I produced a community created podcast on the history of a local theatre, which is literally on a cliff edge. We chatted to 20 contributors, asking them all exactly the same questions, and then we shaped their responses into a story. I sort of knew the lie of the land before we started and I knew that the intention was to mark an achievement and celebrate this community. There was a huge amount of editing to do, but certainly in its conception, structure and sticking to set questions, it felt like writing, most closely journalism.
https://open.spotify.com/show/1Lix62KR3gYAZbEkeXgmyu
I’m on a crusade here to get more writers podcasting: you can of course make audio versions of anything at all that you write, and the set up fees and technical mastery demands are both reasonable. Please shout if you’d like to know anything more specific.
Profitable Writing
Finally, often there’s an overlap between versatile writing and profitable writing, and many profitable writers are also quite versatile – Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood and Stephen King, for three examples.
Here’s an interesting take on ghost writing and its different forms, and where the opportunities lie currently.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these links in your stocking and found some useful ideas.
May I wish you a great and creative break, and may those word elves be spreading inspiration dust all around you in 2024.
Writer Explores 