This topic would have been far less complex a few weeks ago. I’ve decided to write Book 4 of the Braided Dimensions series—originally planned as a trilogy—based on reader requests. There are some things that want expansion or closure beyond Strange Alliances, BD Book 3 (about to be on the shelves).
Thus, my plan for the coming year is to work back and forth between BD Book 4 (yet to be named) and Elf Stone of the Neyna. I haven’t quite decided whether to hold off on BD Bk 4 while I complete Neyna. I’ll have to see how it feels. I also have to decide on which to share with my writing group, or whether to add a new writing group that can be solely a virtual group ongoing, for the sci fi.
On another topic, I’ve been coordinating writing groups in my area for nine years. It’s a bit like matchmaking and has equally stunning moments of success, like when a dear friend finds her perfect group and moves forward with a novel that’s been many years in the works. Now, the local writers club is discussing formalizing my process, since they announce my free service in their newsletter. Formalizing (or institutionalizing) often means weighting a process down, making it cumbersome. And sure enough, the club is worried about being perceived as sponsoring any particular writing groups if they provide the web page. So it looks like I’ll be innovating a secured page in this site and offering access to it to the writers club (large local organization). It occurs to me that I might open it to the world to facilitate formation of writing groups. I might want to form one for myself, specifically for sci fi. 🙂 I’ll keep you posted!… literally. lol
So, in other words, writing this coming year does not just entail writing books. It encompasses how I involve myself with the local and greater worlds of writers, such as maintaining this blog. There are many writers’ forums I could take part in. When we’re back face-to-face in the world, I can do public readings.
So here are my goals: 1) continue the two hours of sprints on Mondays for my novel writing, 2) share pages of my novel(s) with my writing group(s) weekly, 3) keep up my blog posts twice a week, 4) facilitate writing groups, and 5) do my due diligence in finding new readers.
Wish me luck “above the sea of fog.”
Hi Marie! I’ve really been enjoying your content on this blog. It sounds like you have some good plans going. I’m really intrigued by your process for organizing writing groups, and I hope we get to learn more about that.
Thank you for responding, Jericho! Lovely to hear from you here. I will definitely write more about writing groups. I’m thinking I might make it easy for myself and set up a Discord server for people to find each other to form writing groups. Up to now, I’ve kept an email list. When people wrote to me wanting to find or form a group, I added them to the list and sent it out again. But having taken part in writing groups for over ten years, I can make suggestions for the group process as well.