Monday 18 March 2019

Learning via an Online Conference...

Haven't we all at some time wanted to go to a major book related event but distance or personal circumstances mean you can't?

Recently the London Book Fair (LBF) took place and it was good to see pictures from writers who were attending.

It also means that the Alliance of Independent Authors will be holding their spring online conference.

This past weekend it was #SelfPubCon2019 and I spent much of Saturday at my computer with my earphones on and my notebook and pen to hand.
(Having previously signed up to the conference (free), but it could be signed up to that day.)

Online learning...

There were links to the various sessions (24 of them) some were panels recorded live at the LBF earlier this month, others were audio presentations or with video on YouTube.

You'll find links to the various sessions on the ALLi Facebook page and Twitter account, but they'll only be available publicly for a short time.

There were some valuable insights into marketing, being more productive and especially interesting were the Going Wide sessions- there's value in the global market. Lots of opportunities for the self-published writers.

I spent Sunday morning catching up on the sessions that were released overnight in the UK.

For anyone who is or intends to self-publish it is worth looking at membership of ALLi.

It's on my to do list before I publish my novel.

Meanwhile there's just one more session to catch up on; spreadsheets...author data...

Have you taken part in an online conference before? If you have, what were the high points for you? If you haven't, what discourages you?








Wednesday 6 March 2019

The Joy of Progress...

March already and I'm finally making progress on the new scenes in the second draft of the novel.

Back in January I was a bit concerned that my heroine wasn't as three-dimensional as my hero, but as I've added the missing scenes and shifted the position of others she's finally started to fill out the gaps.

I'm definitely going to have to make her a few years older than I originally imagined her, so I'm going to look at my backstory and timelines.

As to Scrivener I'm definitely feeling more confident about writing with it and using a different font has helped- I'm more aware of the words filling the page too, but that's helping not hindering.

Today I finished chapter 11, all new scenes and conflicts both internal/external. I also realised how two-faced the antagonist is...

Last month I was not feeling as confident about how the draft was going and I was doubting my ability all round- impostor syndrome!?

There's still a lot of work to do, but I'm not going to give up.

There's still about ten days of my Scrivener trial left and I will probably go ahead and purchase it...

This year...


image:pixabay.com