The Next Level – today’s session summary and key notes (Newcastle Writers Festival event)

Below is a session summary and key notes from today’s Newcastle Writers Festival session ‘The Next Level: How to take your writing from hobby to publication’. This is a FREE event held today at Newcastle City Hall in the Mulubinba Room at 3pm.

What the session’s about

If you’ve always thought about writing a book, this session will encourage you to start getting those words on the page. If you’ve started but don’t know how to finish, this session will help that too. And if you’ve finished the book (congratulations!), this session will give you some tips on how to polish it so it’s ready for publication.

See below for key links mentioned today in the session.

Who are the presenters and what will they be talking about?

Margaret Jackson will discussing writing groups and how they can give invaluable help to different people at different stages of their writing. Marg blogs at http://www.margsslicesoflife.blogspot.com.au

Aidan Walsh will be talking about discipline and how it’s a necessary skill to master to get that book finished. Aidan keeps an encyclopaedia of this fantasy world at http://www.unpathedwaters.com and Tweets @AidanRWalsh

Maree Gallop will be talking through her writing process and how she takes an initial idea through to a complete story ready for publication. Maree blogs at http://www.mareegallop.wordpress.com and Tweets @MareeGallop

And I’ll be sharing a few hints and tips along the way, including talking about the importance of an ‘online presence’ as an author, and the different forms your writing can take.

Follow @jessieansons

A few things mentioned in the session today:

eBook Mirrors – this is an eBook featuring stories from a number of the writers in our writing group. Check it out here.

ABC Open 500 words projects – a brilliant free online community for Australians wishing to share their stories online. Here are my stories from ABC Open.

Amazon author pages – these are easy to set up. Here is mine.

Top Ten Tuesday – an online writing challenge where you have to list your top ten of certain writing-related topics each Tuesday.

Friday Fictioneers – an online writing challenge where people around the world post 100 word stories inspired by the one photo.

Different forms your writing can take

I will be talking through these in today’s session.

The traditional forms of writing are: