EWF – Digital Writing Conference

EWF – Digital Writing Conference

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend EWF’s Digital Writing Conference. It was a learning experience in a world that can be somewhat daunting to the emerging writer.

One of the things I took away from the conference was create a hook and work out who your audience is. This is actually quite hard for me since, as a fiction writer, I do not have a hook or, better still, do not want to be branching off and writing about other things.  I could write on a number of different topics that could create an audience such as foster care, raising difficult children, attachment and trauma disorders. But I question this move mainly as it will take time away from what I really want to be doing, writing stories.

I do not wish to be an expert in a chosen field. I simply wish to write entertaining stories that people like to read. Now I can do this but how then do I create an audience and a readership as I write more stories? Writing a half decent story takes time. It is not something you can do over night. So how can I keep people interested as I write the stories?

This is my dilemma. As much as I loved the conference it has left me with more questions than answers since many of the panellists were journalists who of course have a chosen field and topics they write on.

The answer at this present stage is just write. Keep writing the stories, sending them out into the big bad world and see what happens. I know everyone keeps telling me I need to concentrate on the business end of writing but I keep thinking that if I don’t have the product then how can I sell anything. I need stories. Lots and lots of stories so people can read them and maybe get a few people who keep coming back to read them.

What do you think? Should I create a hook, write on a particular subject and post on my blog constantly or should I just write the stories and see what happens? Let me know what you are doing as a fiction writer or as a reader of mine what would you like to see more of?