25 Mar 2012
How To Write: Historical Fiction
This is the first of our ‘how to’ form and genre articles to compliment the Form and Genre Challenge. This week, Write Anything’s own Emma Venables gives you the lowdown on writing historical fiction. I’ve written historical fiction for as long as I can remember. One of my teachers at high school first alerted me to this fact when we’d written ghost stories and mine was the... read more
25 Mar 2012
Form and Genre Challenge #7 Submission
Congratulations to the Tanka winners… Judges’ Choice Award: Kate Sherrod’s Faith Manages. Readers’ Choice Award: Jan Brown’s Nature’s Stretch. (with 32% of the vote) Honourable mentions to: Judges’ Choice Award: Barbara Gildea Readers’ Choice Award: Annie Evett. “The Tanka Challenge” Challenge: To a tanka poem. Genre: Open Word Count: Open Participating... read more
24 Mar 2012
PROMPTed #8 Seasons
PROMPTed is a weekly collection of writing prompts to inspire your writing week. The prompts are loosely grouped under a common theme and include a random line prompt, a photograph, a song/music video, a sensory suggestion and a famous quote. This week’s prompts are programmed by guest programmer Stacey Larner who squeezes her writing in around three children and her other interests. She writes fairly... read more
24 Mar 2012
Call for submissions: know your forms and genres?
Since February we have been running the Form and Genre Challenge 2012, a weekly writing exercise to pull you out of your comfort zone and get you trying out unfamiliar forms and genres of writing. Right now though, I’m looking for people who are comfortable with these forms and genres. In order to help participants in the weekly challenge, we’d like to run a guest post about that week’s... read more
23 Mar 2012
On Goals and Success
As you might imagine, the big projects we have going on here at Write Anything have had me thinking a lot about goal-setting and success measurement. It’s been a bit of a struggle for me to set my writing-related goals in a way that feels “right”. Part of this may very well be the 14+ years I spent working for a rather large company everyone reading this has heard of and either loves or... read more
23 Mar 2012
Shiny New Crayons and a Blank Piece of Paper
I’m the new kid in the Write Anything sand box whose shirt bears the tell tale crease marks of just coming out of the box. My pencil case is unsullied by graffiti, the pens all work and the pencils are not blunt. I am yet to emblazon my school bag with the logos of my favourite heavy metal bands. That’s me with the shiny leather shoes (I wish my socks stayed up) and Band Aids on my heels to avoid... read more
22 Mar 2012
How to do Social Media Right
Kristen Lamb’s wonderful social media how-to book, We are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media (Who Dares Wins Publishing 2010), provides a great nuts-and-bolts introduction to the basics of marketing your book online. She shares her knowledgeable insights in branding yourself, putting your name out there (something we innately fear), and joining the online conversation in an... read more
22 Mar 2012
I’m Really Bad At This (Beta v.1.0)
The actual name for this article was going to be: The Importance of Beta Reading: An examination of why we should have our work beta read prior to dissemination and why we should beta read other’s work. Thankfully, I’m not really good at writing dissertations. Which brings me to… *fanfare*…. My favorite time of year; Self Critique Month. My original idea for this post was to generate a... read more
