Talk about wild and woolly! 2014 was a crazy busy, crazy awesome year. Not counting writing posts, some of my highlights included:
- A feature on NPR’s All Things Considered
- IPPY, NIEA, and Silver Falchion (Finalist) Awards for Structuring Your Novel
- NIEA Finalist mention for my portal fantasy Dreamlander
- Third Write to Done Top 10 Blogs for Writers Award
- 101 Best Websites for Writers mention from Writer’s Digest
- Jane Eyre: The Writer’s Digest Annotated Classic release
- Outlining Your Novel Workbook and Structuring Your Novel Workbook release
- Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration release
- Audio book releases for both Outlining Your Novel and Structuring Your Novel
- Two webinars for Writer’s Digest and one for ACFW
- Japanese translation of Structuring Your Novel and Korean translation of Outlining Your Novel
- Two articles in the Writer’s Digest magazine
- And, oh yeah, a mention on actor Robert Downey, Jr.’s Facebook page!
And on the personal front, there was that entirely awesome jaunt to Hawaii.
As always, I am humbled by the enthusiasm of Wordplayers everywhere! And I’m thrilled and fulfilled to be able to help you out on your writing journeys. Here’s to an even wilder 2015! And, to get you started, take a look at Helping Writers Become Authors’ Top 10 Writing Posts of 2014–based on page rank–just in case you missed them or want to brush up.
Top Writing Posts on Helping Writers Become Authors in 2014
1. Creating Stunning Character Arcs
2. How to Successfully Kill a Character: The Checklist
3. Why Your Character’s Goal Needs to Be 1 of These 5 Things
4. Make Your Character Reactions Twice as Interesting
5. How to Write a Gut-Wrenching Tragic Scene–Thanks to One Little Detail
6. Warning Signs! Your Character Is Acting Out of Character
7. How to Write a Flat Character Arc
8. How to Use Minor Characters to Help You Discover Theme
9. Most Common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 30: Describing Character Movements
10. How to Tell if Your Protagonist Needs a Better Goal
And what about 2015? For the most part, 2015 seems to be shaping up to be the Year of the Novel for me. My two major projects will be finishing up edits on my historical dieselpunk story Storming to get it ready for publication in late fall or early winter and writing the first draft of my historical superhero story Wayfarer.
Since 2014 was (as you can see) primarily focused on non-novel stuff, I’m dancing all over with the chance to immerse myself in fictional worlds once again. However, I’m also hoping to work on a handful of writing how-to projects for you all as well. My big goal is to finish a couple of courses, one based on Outlining Your Novel and one on Structuring Your Novel. I also have a Most Common Writing Mistakes book waiting in the wings. It’s going to be a fun year!
Tell me your opinion: What were your top writing posts from 2014?
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Happy Thanksgiving, Wordplayers!
About K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland
Happy New Year, Katie!! It’s been a fun one on many fronts. Looking forward to more great things in the new year! 😀
Thanks so much for being such an integral part of the Wordplayer community this year, Steve!
Happy New Year, and (hopefully) Happy New World.
Croyan and Mariel. The Resource – the offer. Four youths. Two Representatives. An encounter, between a Primal Governor and their very own Representative.
This is who I am. As a human being, this is my identity, and attempting to make this the identity that changes the world will be my New Year’s Resolution.
Happy New Year to you too!
You had quite an amazing year!
I had lots of help from folks like you!
This site has provided some invaluable insight for me. The strides I’ve taken this year are unmatched because of what you’ve done here. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this, Katie. This is exactly what I have been looking for.
Happy New Years to you as well as all of my fellow visitors, and to all of your fellow contributors!
Now that’s awesome to hear! You go!
You had a wonderful year, KM!
I just found you through your podcaast a couple of months ago and I have to say that it’s been a wonderful help. I love the bite-sized snippets of advice I can get here and there on my commute to work, so thank you very, very much for those!
I hope your 2015 will become as riveting as your 2014 (and you get to immerse yourself in fiction more if that’s what you enjoy!)
I’m so glad to hear you’re enjoying the podcasts! Makes my day to hear they’ve been useful!
Happy New Year!!!!! Thank you so much for your awesome posts and email responses!!!!! I am a 15 year old getting back into writing, and this year I will destroy my perfectionism!!!!!
You go! 😀
Katie:
Happy New Year and a productive and inspiring 2015. I’m intrigued at starting my new year with a little more organization and wonder how you do it. As I begin to block my day I wonder is it by time or task e.g. 30 minutes for devotions and prayer (say), 20 minutes email, 2 hours novel writing, 30 minutes blog etc… or do you go by task e.g. if you want/need six hours to write do you just carry on at the expense of other daily needs. I doubt whether there is any one answer. I’m leaning towards blocking time so that if I complete with time to spare: Bonus!
By time is my first approach: e.g., email and odds and ends are in the morning, business projects are in the early afternoon, fiction is late afternoon. I try to stick to that approach, but I’m OCD about finishing projects, which can sometimes lead me to let one of the earlier projects bleed over into a later project’s time. I’m trying to be more strict about that this year.
Congrats on a very productive 2014. My goal for 2015 is to get my own production up by a lot (1 novel, 2 NF books, 4 short stories). Since I finished 2014 with no finished projects, this will be a nearly infinite increase 🙂
Very much enjoy your blog, and wish you a superlative year!
You go! Productivity-uppers are always worthy New Year’s goals.
I started my own blog this year and one of the things I enjoy the most is discovering other blogs.
Your blog is one of my favourite. I loved all your posts 🙂
I’m so glad you’re finding the posts useful! Congrats on your blog.