Hyba Is Writing

How to start blogging as a fiction author: We begin with the platform. Let's talk about how to blog - or just be online, for that matter - as a fiction author.  Note: If you're on Twitter and Instagram, this isn't really the guide for you, because these social media platforms behave a little differently to what I'm going to be discussing in this set of posts. If you have a website, a blog, a tumblr blog, or a similar kind of platform, then this might be a suitable guide for your needs. So, the first step is actually choosing a blogging platform. Are you going to use Wordpress? Medium? Tumblr? Blogger? Something else entirely? Make sure to make the choice based on a few different factors: Ease of access. You need your blog to be easily found and easily accessible by your audience. Most blogging platforms will list your blog in Google search results, for example, and that's really helpful for getting discovered - but discovery alone isn't going to be enough, and w...

Keeping Worldbuilding Simple Let's get straight to the point: It's easy for things to spiral out of control and become overwhelming when you're worldbuilding. Much like character profiles, worldbuilding can trick you into falling into a pit of details you'll never really need. And even though it can be loads of fun to create entire worlds with their own cultures, histories, festivals, politics, economic systems, ecosystems, architecture, geography, and so on, you generally won't need to actually flesh all of that out when you're writing.  Don't get me wrong - it definitely depends on what you want out of your story and your worldbuilding, and I myself have gone the detailed route before (hence the SPLITE worldbuilding pack). But I have also written enough stories to know that that's not always the case, and is, in fact, the exception, not the rule. So, today's lesson is going to focus on worldbuilding by necessity.  At its simplest form, this just m...

Q: What do you do when you're not writing? Writing - especially if you're writing with the intent to self-publish - is heavy, time-consuming work. It means that when I'm not writing the stories, I'm either revising/editing them, making graphics for them, trying to talk about them online and garner some kind of interest for when I do finally publish them, and so on. I might also be networking, or trying to find a magazine or anthology to submit a short story to. It's a lot of work. In fact, it doesn't really leave you with much room for anything else.  But when I'm not writing, or trying to do the business of writing, I enjoy playing video games, watching movies/series, going out with friends, catching up with my favourite podcasts and YouTube channels, and working on a wide range of other hobbies that I still consider myself a complete newbie in.  I'd like to start doing a little DIY. Some woodworking and carpentry, perhaps. Maybe figure out how to fix p...

November 2024 Writing Goals It's November, and the month sort of just crept up on me out of nowhere. I managed to make October productive, but it was a chaotic type of productivity, the kind that fizzles out after some time and leaves you feeling burnt out and tired and not much interested in anything. I want to have a productive November, but I also want it to be an organized, disciplined productivity. Before I get into how I think I might accomplish that (and possibly put out a novel by end of year), I want to list my writing goals for the month. Complete the Prologue for The Black Hare interactive fiction .      (about 30% complete at the moment!) Complete Chapters 1-5 for The City of Light . Get 20 subscribers to my author newsletter . Share 1 free writing resource. I get into each goal in a little more detail later on in this blog post.  I wish I could add more onto the list, but that's already pretty heavy, right? So, how am I going to keep myself account...