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Building a Basic Author Website

There are so many things that a writer needs to think about as they navigate the publishing industry, and the internet has added a whole other layer of complexity to the equation. There’s social media and the headaches about building a fan base there. There’s the email list and the management of a newsletter.

But if there is only one thing that you do on the internet for your online platform, create a website.

All writers seeking publication, traditionally or self-published, NEED a website. No exception. Your website is your online home. It’s the place where readers will go to get the latest information about your various projects, both old and new. You will likely have a list of all your published books, links to where they can be purchased, and links to interviews and other goodies. Yes, your social media will likely have information about the latest happenings too; however, any older material is quickly buried.

Seriously, folks, the moment you decide that you ultimately want to be published, start thinking about that website. And you don’t need to spend an arm and a leg on fancy website designs either. No need to stress yourself about learning HTML or CSS. Just focus on the page content and get it out there.

In today’s post, we’re going to explore the bare-minimum website for writers.

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Sorry, I have not read every book

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just read day in and day out? But life has to happen and reading every day from the moment you get up to when you go to bed is not possible.

However, because I'm a writer and editor (that's my day job), I encounter so many who assume that I have all this time on my hands to read every book on the planet. And it's another assumption that makes an ass out of all parties involved.

Far too many times, I encounter someone who starts talking about some random book, assuming that I've read it. Yet, more often than not, I don't have a clue what they're talking about.

"But surely you've read that book. Oh, you know the one I'm talking about. It only came out… um… last year. Ohh, why haven't you read that book yet? It's in your genre."

Well, I haven't read it because I didn't know it existed. Or I have too many other books to read. Or I just don't have enough time in the day.

It's time to put a little reality in this equation, and highlight that there are only so many hours in the day, and sometimes, I don't want to read.

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Write Realistic Dialogue with non-native English Speakers

Writing takes a community, sharing ideas and supporting one another. So, when we get approached with an article that shares hard-earned knowledge, we couldn't be happier to pass that information.

When Meredith Rankin reached out to me with an article about how to write dialogue with those who are still learning how to speak English, I was over the moon. While I am surrounded by those whose first language wasn't English (my own husband being one of them), it never occured to me how to treat this in the written form. But Meredith has some solid advice for writers.

Over to you, Meredith.

Write Realistic Dialogue between English Speakers and English-language Learners

Fiction often treats second language fluency as an all or nothing issue. Either the characters are completely fluent in the second language, or they’re completely ignorant of the language. That’s unrealistic. In my latest manuscript, I tried to convey the complexities of language learning.

Realistically, becoming totally fluent in another language takes years for most adults. Everyone learns at different speeds and the learning process is affected by myriad factors, including some outside the learner’s control. When I volunteer-taught English as a foreign language (EFL), I had students who were homebound because they had poor health or caring for loved ones; I had other students who were immersed daily in the language. Their progression differed accordingly.

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Woman watching the sunset

Goodbye NaNoWriMo

When I first started writing, I was introduced to this idea of NaNoWriMo. It was presented to me as a writing challenge, where writers aim to write 50,000 words in a span of a month. The idea was that short novels are roughly 50,000 words, so writing those 50,000 words in one month would mean that you wrote a novel in a month.

Novels for me are much longer than 50,000 words, with most of my drafts clocking in at upwards of 98,000 words. The novel I'll be releasing next year is just under 140,000 words. However, I saw NaNoWriMo as an opportunity to get my butt in the chair and just write. It was about turning off the internal editor—which is not easy for me, especially these days.

So, in 2014, I joined NaNoWriMo… and wrote just shy of 70,000 words during that November. And those 70,000 words turned out to be the skeletal bones of two (2) different novels in my high fantasy series, along with some additional scenes that happen in later books.

In 2015, I became the municipal liaison (ML) for the Christchurch, New Zealand region. In 2020 (in the middle of the pandemic), the New Zealand Elsewhere region was added to my portfolio.

But there were seeds of discontent that had been brewing… and in 2023, it all came to a head. The demise of NaNoWriMo as an organization was on the horizon, and I refused to go down with it. So, I, like many other MLs around the world, jumped ship at the end of the 2023 season.

But the idea of NaNoWriMo was still important. So, I was hoping that things would turn around. I was secretly hoping that someone would be willing to step up and take my place—though I knew no one would. Still, as we head into the 2024 NaNoWriMo season, I'm saddened to see that there are zero MLs in New Zealand. It's seven (7) NaNoWriMo regions in New Zealand, and no representatives of the organization in this country.

I'm not surprised, but I'm still saddened.

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Understanding the Nature of the Antagonist

When we start the conversation about the protagonist and the antagonist, some writers instantly jump to the conclusion that we are referring to a good-guy-vs-bad-guy story.

One might ask, "What if I don't have a villain in my story?"

My response: "Not all stories have villains. But all stories have characters striving towards a goal of some sort… and there is always something getting in the way."

I dove deeper into this idea in a previous post, highlighting that the role of the antagonist in a story is to get in the way of the protagonist achieving those goals, whatever those goals happen to be. But your protagonist is not necessarily the good guy of the story. And the antagonist is not necessarily another character. The good-guy-vs-bad-guy concept is one of many protagonist/antagonist pairings that might exist.

It's time to take a dive into the different types of antagonists found in stories. And not all of them are characters. We'll be looking at the classic good-guy-vs-bad-guy trope, but we're also going to dive into man-vs-nature and man-vs-self.

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