Writing, Self-Publishing, Book Marketing

Look how far we’ve come – Wordclay vidoes that (we hope) make you laugh!

But all that is easier said now, as the smoke clears and the dust settles and Wordclay.com soars into cyberspace.

More than a year back, when Wordclay was little more than a budding idea in our heads, we understood the colossal task of designing a comprehensive DIY self-publishing company and encoding a free online publishing wizard wouldn’t be an easy one. Of course we knew there would be a number of hiccups at the beginning. And sure enough, not a day after we rolled out the prototype wizard, did the emails start flying into (and filling!) our inboxes, begging the same questions.

Only this morning, the Wordclay bloggers gathered around a table, brunching as usual, waxing over coffee and crepes, and reflected on the last year spent building a user-friendly DIY publishing Web site. So in honor of this launch and the extent that Wordclay has grown, we decided that we would give you a behind the scenes snapshot of our operation. 

Forming Wordclay: Sometimes You Make a Mess When Creating a Work of Art  

Talk about a mess! 

Building an online publishing platform and forum for writers has been more a dialogue between design and content than the great pyramids. Okay – maybe that’s an exaggeration, but the process has certainly been an ongoing endeavor and still very much a work-in-progress. 

Imagine (if you can) a publishing program without a word of content. Angie and I knew how the publishing wizard worked (or would work), but had no clue where our content would be placed, how it would be posted, nor when for that matter! It was almost as though we were wearing blindfolds and set in front of a police lineup. Or as if we were asked to write directions to somewhere we had never been. 

Picture Angie and I hunched over our computers, hours spent racking our brains and pulling our hair out, peeling back the layers of Wordclay one word at a time. 

Fortunately, slowly, but surely, Wordclay began to take shape; directions were matched to the wizard; video tutorials were added; questions were answered on the FAQs; the Services Store was expanded; and the Bookstore evolved as tiny light bulbs started to ding above our heads. Wordclay didn’t look half bad. Our legs started bumping with jazzy enthusiasm and almost child-like excitement – our vision was coming to its peak, finally! 

As many bumps in the Internet pathway as we’ve seen, our team has charged ahead, learned and designed an ever-growing, yet comprehensive publishing forum for writers, artists, crafters, anyone interested in publishing. You could say that’s the heart of Wordclay – our desire to maintain an Internet environment where writers can live, sleep, eat (hopefully brunch), breathe and, most importantly, thrive. 

That’s just the beginning, too! 

This launch will tell us volumes about what we can add and develop in order to please our members and even the writer just passing through. Have an idea? Need some advice? Just read a book that you’re dying to talk about? Got a suggestion for our next video?  Post a comment and connect with any one of the Wordclay bloggers. 

The more you write, the more we can help! 

This is Justin, blogcasting from Wordclay, signing off.