This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
All this week we’ll be taking you behind the scenes at Novelicious with guest posts from Team Novelicious. Today, we hear from founder and editor-in-chief of Novelicious Kirsty Greenwood.
I’ve never stuck to much of anything before; for the early part of my twenties I flitted from one thing to another, never quite knowing what I was supposed to do with my life. And then, after my boyfriend Edd bought me an internet connection for my birthday, I decided to start a blog called Novelicious in which I would write about the books I’d been reading that week. Since then my whole life has changed. I found the thing that makes me properly, heart-glowingly happy – writing stories, thinking about other people’s stories, sharing stories and helping budding authors to write their own stories. Spending most of my time blogging about books and learning everything I could from my favourite authors led to me writing my own book, getting an agent and, eventually, a book deal with Pan Macmillan.
Since the wonderful Kerry took over as Editor and I’ve been writing my books, my role at Novelicious has become more of an overseeing one. I help Kerry to come up with new feature ideas and have final say on the content, tone, design and direction of the site. My tasks really vary: one week I can be working on opportunities to expand our audience and grow our subscriber lists, the next I’ll be tweaking the site design, interacting with followers on social media or answering emails from publishers, authors, team members or readers of the site.
For me, the best part of being at Novelicious is Team Novelicious. From gossiping on our secret Facebook group page to encouraging and celebrating each other’s writing journeys, we have such a lovely time together. They are all clever, passionate, kind and vibrant individuals. That I get to work with them makes me feel good about the world and I now count some of these women amongst my closest friends.
The other great thing about this job is that I get more free books then I could ever dream of. I’m pretty smug about that. My postman is not quite as happy about it, though.
I work in the attic of my house. I like it in there because it’s cosy and whimsical and quiet enough for me to concentrate. I sometimes wish I could be one of those stylish ladies who decorates in a trendy minimalistic way, but I am drawn to bright colours and shiny things and lights like a magpie. I do Novelicious tasks and first draft writing at my desk. If I’m working at night, reading or editing, I will curl up in the chair of cushions with a cup of tea and it doesn’t feel much like work at all.
My hope for the next year is that we get to take the brand offline and into the actual human world as well as the virtual one. I’d love us to do more events IN REAL LIFE and to meet the readers, authors and publishers who make what we do possible. Until then, we’re going to be trying our very best to continue being the go-to site for readers and writers of contemporary fiction and if the next five years are as marvelous as the first five, I’ll consider myself a very lucky person indeed.