Today we welcome Jane Holland who tells us how she
went ‘From Blog to Book’
Last
year I went a bit crazy and decided it would be fun to write a How-To blog for
writers who were not necessarily beginners but felt lost within the publishing
industry. I called it 52 Ways To Write A Novel, with the cheerful thought that
I could blog a few hundred words every week for a year, and it wouldn’t hurt
too much or distract from my novel-writing.
I was
wrong, of course. Writing intelligently about our unforgiving industry is not easy
to do in a soundbite, and I didn’t like putting out posts that felt rushed or unpolished.
So it did take more time than I liked. But the feedback I received from other
writers encouraged me to keep going.
52
Ways doesn’t deal specifically with romantic or historical fiction, both of
which I have written in abundance, but any kind of commercial novel. However, many
of the writers who chatted about their own experiences in the comments section
are fellow members of the RNA. So the blog developed a slight kink, if you’ll
pardon the word, in the direction of romance. But I was writing a crime novel
at the time, so crime crept in too. My hope was that the blog would help commercial
writers, so I focused on that rather than genre.
After Week
20, it occurred to me that I was totting up thousands of words of free advice
on my blog, and wouldn’t it be nice to publish an ebook of my wisdom so far and
charge a few pennies in return? (I’m a mercenary type, you understand.)
But
when I sat down to convert my blog into an ebook, I discovered that it wasn’t
as simple as transferring all the posts into one file and publishing it. For a
start, I had dozens of photos and captions in my blog. All that needed to be
stripped out and the formatting simplified. Furthermore, my blog was not in a
coherent order. For instance, I had given advice on making friends with other
writers before advice on how to write a chapter opening, and while we all like
to relax at RNA lunches, I thought I had better put business before pleasure!
So I
cut and pasted the posts into a more logical order, wrote an Introduction and
an Afterword, then expanded each post into a full chapter. I had used short
paragraphing on the blog, but that looked odd so I increased paragraph length.
To keep things dynamic, I got permission to use a selection of comments left on
the blog by other writers, then sprinkled them throughout the text.
The
result is 21 Ways To Write A Commercial
Novel, a combination of my blog posts with other writers’ comments, plus a fantastic
letter of advice to new writers by Rowan Coleman, addressed in the first
instance to our mutual friend, Sarah Callejo. ‘Write the damn book!’ Rowan
urges Sarah … advice even the most experienced writers can take to heart.
Jane
Holland writes as herself, plus Victoria Lamb, Elizabeth Moss and Beth Good
among others. Her archived blog is here and you can chat with her
most days on Twitter: @janeholland1
21 Ways To Write A Commercial Novel is £1.99, published by Jane’s imprint Thimblerig Press, and is ONLY
available on Amazon Kindle (but can be read on most devices): Amazon:
Thank you joining us
today and good luck with the book.
The RNA Blog is brought to you by
Elaine Everest and Natalie Kleinman.
If you would like to appear on the Blog please contact
us at elaineeverest@aol.com
