Ready, Set, Blog! by Johanna Harness

If you're signed up for the Amwriting Newsletter, you received an email a few weeks ago discussing changes to this site.  I've been spreading myself too thin trying to branch out into new areas, so we're pulling back and focusing on the things we do really well.  Something had to go.  Since we're based on a community that already works well on Twitter, the community pages here were an obvious way to trim.  As one #amwriting author reassured me, "This change makes the #amwriting site a very modern writer showcase  - not just another 'like Facebook but for writers' site."

If you miss the ability to work with other writers in your genre, doing in-depth critique work, you might enjoy playing along at the just-made-public Book Country, an author site developed and maintained by Penguin.  Many writers on Twitter served as beta testers for the site, so you're likely to see some familiar faces there.  For more about the site, read "Aspiring Authors Get Help Online," an article by Julie Bosman for The New York Times.

Today I'm very happy to announce a new emphasis on community blogging.  Why?  Because we're writers and we do this well!  By pulling traffic to the site, we create better exposure for all the authors here and we give blog writers a chance to show off their skills and link to their own pages.

I was hoping to get regular blogging started in June, but enthusiastic people started writing to me and I started giving them May dates.  I wrote to a few more people and May blogging is officially under way.

We do still have May dates open so, if you're interested in blogging, let me know.  (Experience with WordPress is a definite plus!)  Guidelines and directions are posted on the guidelines page.

Let the fun begin!