3 years of Red Pens and Playwriting!
Can you believe it, folks? Three whole years I've been working away at this blog! And there's a whole bunch of you who have been following along the whole time, which is honestly pretty fantastic. I love hearing from you when a post has really stood out to you; it's a great reminder of why I started doing this in the first place. So let's take a moment now to look at how far we've come in the last 12 months, and where things are headed next.
Accomplishments
Year 3 of the blog has been a busy one! A lot of this is thanks to my new, non-office-working lifestyle, which has given me a lot more time and energy for working on Red Pens and Playwriting, amongst other projects and activities. In the last year, I have published:
- 44 brand new blog posts, including:
- A short piece of fiction about guiding lights
- A brief introduction to Gothic fiction (which I will be expanding on next month...)
- A series of reflection posts exploring the basics of textual analysis (more on this below)
- A Q&A post where I answered questions sent in by my lovely members
- The first half of a new series of Grammar Talk posts focusing on different forms of narrative structure
- 3 updated and re-released reflection posts that everyone can now access:
- my very first guest post! The delightful Emily Munro from Writing About Writing About Writing contributed an excellent piece on building a revision checklist. I have a second guest slated in for the end of the year, and I'm very excited to see what they have to say!
I also (FINALLY) found the time to work on my introductory writing guide, Red Pens 101, which was officially released in April. I am super proud of this achievement, as it's something I'd been planning for quite a while. I also happen to think it's rather good! So if you or someone you know would benefit from a brief, easy-to-understand, entertaining guide to grammar, go get Red Pens 101 from my Ko-fi shop (if you use the code RPP25 by the end of the month, you can even get it 25% off!). You can also get a preview of a few sections from some tie-in Grammar Talk posts I put out earlier this year:
New things
Of course, I can't let an anniversary go by without releasing something new in the shop to celebrate. This year it's a fancy, polished-up PDF compilation of the recent reflection series I did on textual analysis: "Learning to Unlock Texts". It's perfect for students on their first forays into literature analysis, and includes several practical exercises to embed the concepts.
Since we're celebrating, this new PDF and everything else in the shop is available at a 25% discount for the rest of the month if you use the code RPP25 at the checkout. So now would be a great time to grab a bundle of Red Pens 101 and the new "Learning to Unlock Texts" for a budding academic in your life. Just the right time for the start of the northern-hemisphere school year and exam prep for those of us in the south, yes?
Up next
As I'm sure you all know by now that I'm not one to rest long on my laurels, and I have lots of plans for new and exciting things that I'd like to do with Red Pens and Playwriting. A year ago I was looking forward to having more time and energy to work on creating better blog content, and now that we've been enjoying the fruits of that expanded capacity I feel ready to start expanding the blog itself. Therefore, I have decided to take a punt on upgrading my plan with the platform I publish on, Ghost. I'll send out more details at the end of the year, but as of January I'll be offering some cool new stuff, including:
- multiple tiers for more (and cheaper) subscription options.
- additional VIP content.
- a whole new newsletter for serialising the series of detective stories I've been working on.
- (maybe also a book club newsletter? I'm not fully sold on this one, so email me or leave a comment if you'd be interested.)
All very thrilling, right? I'm definitely feeling thrilled, that's for sure. There's just have one little hiccup: I'm just a tiny bit short on the funds I need to make the upgrade. Very, very close. So it would be most excellent (in the words of Bill and Ted) if you could help me clear those last few tens of dollars by scoping out the Ko-fi shop and boosting the reach of the blog.
Just to give you a little bit of extra motivation, I'll make a deal with you. Every time someone shares a Red Pens and Playwriting post between now and the end of the year, if you can find a way to make sure I see it (e.g. by tagging me, tagging the blog, or emailing it to me at redpensandplaywriting@pobox.com), I promise that I will write you a bespoke poem. Every time. Probably a limerick, but haikus and sonnets are also possibilities. You don't even have to leave your email app to do it; you can share a post directly from an email by clicking this little button here:
I encourage you to go back through the blog and find some of your favourite posts to share around. If you want to share a post that is paid content, just get in touch and I can give you a gift link that will allow you to share the full post without a paywall. I dare you all to make my life as difficult as possible trying to keep up with poems!
Thank you all for reading, enjoying, and engaging with Red Pens and Playwriting over the last year. Extra thanks goes to those of you who have contributed time, work, and money to keep things ticking along. I'm super pumped for what the next year will bring, and I hope you are too!
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