How To Write, Edit And Publish Your Novel

I've done a number of workshops over the past few years which set out to help accelerate people's booky journeys by sharing with them some of the more useful things I have found out in my own sixteen years of writing, publishing and selling books. Mostly I have discovered things the hard way and the idea is just because I did, doesn't mean you have to.

Now I'm doing a new and expanded series together with the Emirates Literature Foundation, set to take place in their august and hallowed halls: four workshops which combine presentation-led talks with hands-on practical sessions where attendees can put some of the stuff we talk about into practice.

You can go straight here and sign up right away 'cos places are really limited!

Starting Saturday 17th September, each five hour workshop breaks into two hours talk, an hour's lunchtime chatting and a two-hour practical session. They run through until 8th October.

In session one, we'll be looking at how to write a book, a big picture overview of why you'd even want to, what to expect, how to structure your story and some guidelines for writing. The second session will look at editing techniques as well as some practical guidance on things like characterisation, dialogue, scene-setting and all that good stuff. 

We'll give session three over to understanding publishing - what the industry looks like right now, what that means to you and how you go about pitching your book to agents, as well as understanding more about what traditional publishing means to you as an author. 

And then, last but by no means least, we'll be looking in session four at how self publishing works and how you can do it for yourself, including what platforms to use, formatting books and covers, uploading them and a look at promotion and marketing.

All in all these sessions are intended to give you everything you need to get started on making that book you always thought you had in you happen, working within a sensible and supportive environment together with a bunch of people going through exactly what you're going through. As I said, I've done a number of these workshops in the past and people have generally enjoyed them, there have been a minimum number of breakdowns or violent assaults and no requests for refunds, so people generally seem to enjoy them and find them useful. Or maybe they're just too embarrassed to complain...

Here's that sign-up link again over at the ELF website - see you there!

If you have any questions, please do hit me up over at Twitter - @alexandermcnabb and if you haven't come across me or my books before (where HAVE you been hiding?) you can find out more over here.