Creative Writing Projects

It's the first post of a new blog.

About nine months ago I self-published a novel called Zero Anaphora. Since then, I've been doing what I can to promote it within my own network, but I've also moved on to start a new project as well. Quite often, I find myself talking to others about my work, old and new, and it continues to come as a surprise that these projects are difficult for me to explain in terms of their content. If I wrote books that were simple enough to sufficiently summarize in ordinary conversations, there wouldn't be any point writing them in the first place, I feel. But explanations are almost necessary, sometimes. Perhaps a blog is an appropriate way to express them--'oh, what do I write about? Here's a link...'

In taking up creative writing again as a hobby one of the better and more useful experiences has been my involvement with groups like Auckland Writers Meetup. We generally get together at a cafe in Mt Eden, Auckland, a couple of times a month. Most of the people that come along don't actually do any creative writing--they're curious about it and have always wanted to try, but are looking for encouragement. To me, that's great. Writing can be really challenging and lonely at the best of times, so it's really quite therapeutic to just talk to other people about it in a casual environment. A few of us even kicked off an exercise where we're writing a crime fiction story together on Google documents--each person takes a turn to write a few paragraphs, and the plot is constructed in an impromptu fashion. Three chapters into it, we've been having fun, and it's very informative to see just how your own style/voice compares when juxtaposed with others so starkly. We also have a Facebook group, since not everyone is in Auckland. 

A while back I also used to be fairly heavily into Scribophile. It's like a social networking site for writers, you partake in a system that allows you to criticize pieces of writing and be rewarded with points that accumulate on your account. Then you spend those points in order to have your work receive similar criticism from other users. It's not a new or bad idea, but I did find that it really attracted only the absolute beginners of creative writing, people who aren't appreciated by their immediate friends and family when it comes to their efforts. I can completely relate to that type of starting point. Still, after swapping a lot of feedback with scribophile users, I can barely continue to stomach the content I'm required to grind through.

But back to my own books. Zero Anaphora was my first go at publishing something digital, an eBook. There are hundreds of these going up on the internet every day, and in front of a relatively small audience proportional to the audiences for other forms of art or entertainment. In the process of teaching myself the basics of eBook marketing, I was advised by an Indies Unlimited administrator that I should stick to a tried and tested format for writing a blurb for my novel. Originally just had "a young woman gives up her career in order to conduct a social experiment upon an unsuspecting lover." I begrudgingly replaced that with a misleading plot summary. It was for the best, but I couldn't understand the need for the compromise until well after I had committed to it.

Blogging isn't new but it still has some value. My main goals with future posts will be to share some ideas with people in my local writing community, and to help inform people who are following/interested in my writing, and perhaps even to give other people ideas, or to help them understand what amateur writing is all about. At the end of the day it can be a hard thing to promote, but that doesn't make me any less passionate about it at this time. I'm working on a new project right now, which I'm very excited about. I'll of course talk more about it in future posts for this blog.

Luke