Thursday, December 29, 2011

On Fiction Writing: A Brief History


Several years and millions of words ago, an idea was borne from thought to reality by the efforts of handful of writers who believe in their craft: a place where people serious about the craft of fiction writing could gather and discuss issues close to their heart and relevant to their work.

As every good idea does, it needed a home in a place where writers and books and the people who love to read them would gather.

It began as a group in a quiet corner of a busy thoroughfare on the Goodreads platform.

On Fiction Writing

In this group, we discuss storytelling and the hazardous road to publication in its many guises from the standpoint of craft and technique. This group is not a showcase or an arena to promote our particular works. We seek to debate how we research, structure, plot, draft, edit, write, and rewrite our novels. How we format, condense, and prepare synopsis, proposals, blurbs, and hooks. And how we plan our assault to the seemingly impregnable fortress of the establishment: agents and publishers.


Our founder, a quiet ...stop laughing, please!.. but serious man of letters, author Carlos J Cortes.

Exceeding hopes, the group grew, and best of all: it acquired as member a group of writers who were serious about their craft.




From this humble beginning came first the 2009 anthology, Ménage à 20: Tales with A Hook (Twenty Goodreads Authors).







A 2010 anthology release had been planned, but what with one thing and another and the vagaries of the publishing world, it did not happen.

Meanwhile, Carlos and Renee Miller, another of the writer/moderators of OFW had been having other ideas. They wanted to write a book on fiction writing.  Not just another book, but a definitive work on the state-of-the-art of fiction writing, from the germ of an ide to getting published, in todays changing world of publishing.  

What came of that effort was ‘the writers best friend’, The Writers Companion, published in 2011.












Now, follow-your-heart and all other platitudes aside, writing is a serious business. 

It was obvious from the beginning of OFW that to attract serious writers to a place where they could not only discuss and work at their craft but also be rewarded for their effort, one needed to provide a platform, one that would be able to provide and sustain dynamic content.

And so, after much hard work, profanity, sweat sleepless nights and alcohol … 

Beginning January 2012, On Fiction Writing will have a new home:






















We hope to see you there in the new year.