IWSG November 2024

Time for our monthly meeting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group! Hosted as ever by Alex J. Cavanaugh, the aim of the group is to offer a safe space where writers can share doubts and insecurities without fear of being judged. This month's co-hosts are Deidre Knight, Lisa Buie Collard, Kim Lajevardi and JQ Rose.

First of all, I don't normally participate in any politics online, but I couldn't let today go by without asking if my American friends are OK. Whatever happens, I think you should all take it easy on yourselves!

With that out of the way, this month's optional IWSG question is: What creative activity do you engage in when you're not writing?

This is an interesting one because I used to have a lot more creative pursuits when I was younger that have fallen by the wayside as I've dedicated a laser focus to writing. As a child, I enjoyed acting, photography, and a little bit of drawing. But as I grew up, my time to do things just for me became more and more limited and I had to zero in on where my greatest passion lay. A familiar tale to many, I'm sure. However, if it counts, in recent years I've found some surprising enjoyment in making visual book-related content. I never saw myself as a particularly visual artist, but Canva is shockingly easy once I found my way around. I haven't made my own book covers - I've sourced images and entrusted them to a designer - but I've made things like book trailers and mood boards, and trying to strike a certain aesthetic that reflects my tone does have a certain satisfaction in it. Of course, my efforts are probably highly amateurish compared to some, but I thought I'd share a couple of things anyway. Here's a trailer I made in the runup to the release of my book The Becalmer: 

And a moodboard for the book I'm currently querying, Mirror Me. I was surprised to get a bunch of positive reactions to this when I took part in #questpit recently, because I always think others' are far better!

Speaking of visual things, the cover for The Becalmer was nominated in the Indieverse Awards for Unforgettable Cover Art, and voting is now open until November 10th! Here's the link. You have to go through all the categories in order to vote, but you can skip any category where you don't know the nominees, and I'm sure you'll find other awesome things to vote on anyway.

And as ever, you'll find all the other entrants for the IWSG right here. See you next month when we'll no doubt get festive - wow, how did that happen?