Category Archives: Writing craft

On Saturday I ran two workshops,  Proposal Writing and How to write Dark Urban Fantasy. The attendees asked so many questions about the publishing industry and the craft of writing that I kept saying I’ll put a link on my blog. So here is the post with the links to all those sites we talked about. Hi People  (waving madly).

Getting feedback on writing.

You’ll get feedback from a writing group, preferably one that concentrates on your genre.

A lot of the attendees were writing speculative fiction (dark urban fantasy, fantasy and SF). So here is a link to the VISION writing group. They meet in person in Brisbane, but they also have an online group where you can swap industry information and ask questions.

There’s also Romance Writers of Australia for those who are writing paranormal romance and dark urban fantasy. If you drop by the Authors page, you’ll see Keri Arthur (Best Selling Dark Urban Fantasy Writer) is a member. The authors are listed alphabetically and you can see what area they are published in on the right. RWA has a paranormal e-list for writers of this genre.

You could do Year of the Edit with the Queensland Writers Centre. They also run Year of the Novel which is on the same page.

Then you could get your manuscript appraised by someone who knows the genre. The Australian Writer’s Market Place is a great resource for finding publishers, agents, competitions and manuscript appraisers.

You could also apply for a mentor through the Australian Society of Authors. A mentor will guide you through the process of writing and give you feedback. Here are last year’s successful entrants who won a mentorship. The Competition is run every year, so watch out for it.

To get your work noticed:

You could enter competitions (you’ll find them in the Australian Writers Market Place) but here are a few.

Varuna runs a number of programs such as fellowships and mentorships.

The QWC is offering an opportunity for children and Young Adult writers to work with editors from Allen & Unwin. And this is their page for general compeitions and opportunities.

CYA Conference (Children & Young Adult writers) often runs pitching opportunities as well as a competition for both published and unpublished writers.

Bundaberg Write Fest is run each year and often has an opportunity to have your work read by and agent/editor.

There’s the Text Writing Competition for YA and children’s books.

The Ipswich Writers Festival aren’t runnign their competition any more and Voices on the Coast and Somerset Literary Festicval competition are for children who write, not for children’s writers.

Steampunk

The workshop attendees were also intrigued by the steampunk genre. Here is a link to Richard Harland’s post about how to write steampunk. And here is a link to Richard in his outfit, about to set off on his book tour. Here is a link to a post I did on the topic, complete with steampunk dalek!

Editing

I did a post recently onthe editing process and here it is.

E-Books

I did a survey on e-books, who is reading, who is writing for them. Here’s the results. There are links through to several other posts on e-books.

So that is it for now. If there’s anything I’ve missed let me know.