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?
