We were lucky to catch up with Janice Hardy recently and have shared our conversation below.

Janice, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

Years ago, I was recommended to teach for Writer’s Digest University (the online workshops) from a writing instructor whose class I had been in for a few years. After seeing my critiques of my fellow students’ work, she felt I’d be a good fit for the Science Fiction and Fantasy class. They agreed, and I was invited to teach several online classes for them.

It was my first experience teaching, and I discovered I had a knack for it. I added my own thoughts and “lectures” to the information they provided and my students loved them—they found them super helpful and said they made the official lessons so much easier to understand. I did that for short while, but then left to focus on my own writing.

Jump ahead several years, and my writing was going well. In 2008, I sold my debut middle grade fantasy novel (The Shifter) as part of a three-book deal with Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins and had to start the long path of promotion. Back then, the sheer breadth of information on how to be an author wasn’t on the web yet, but everyone was talking about how authors needed to blog, so I created one.

Problem was, I had no idea what to blog about. I was a nobody. Who would care to read about my journey? The only topic I knew I could talk about on a daily basis—and everyone said you had to blog every day in those early years—was writing. So I decided to do that.

I called the blog “The Other Side of the Story” and wrote about craft. I did what I’d done in my online classes and shared examples and got into the nitty gritty of how to write and what the “rules” really meant. I didn’t just say “you need to show, not tell” but gave advice on how to do that.

It wasn’t long before my readership took off. The blog started as part writing advice, part author story, but I quickly realized the posts that kept people coming back were my craft articles. I embraced the teaching side of it and rebranded the entire site to “Fiction University,” focusing on craft, the business of writing, and how to be an author. I brought in guest authors to show that not every writer writes the same way, and fifteen years later, I not only blog about writing, I published eight craft books, and teach writing at conferences across the country.

I might have tripped and fallen into it, but I love teaching and helping other writers improve their craft and achieve their dreams. I had no clue what I was doing at the start, but I’m so glad I gave blogging a try!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

For something that started almost on a whim, Fiction University turned into the cornerstone of my author business. I’ve written and published novels, but when I attend conferences, I’m always recognized for my website and my craft books. Sometimes I want to wave a little sign that says “I also write novels!” (grin) But it means a lot to me when I run into writers who were struggling and found the help they needed on my site, from my workshops, or in one of my books.

Because that’s a big part of why I do this. I love teaching writing and helping my fellow writers. It’s fun to tear apart the mechanics of craft and find the right example or explanation that will create those lightbulb moments for someone. It makes my day every time I get an email from someone saying they had trouble with X and my post on Y helped them finally figure it out. Or they read my Show, Don’t Tell book and now they understand what it means and how to use it. Puts a smile on my face for sure.

I get it, and I’m a writer, too. I know how it feels to struggle as a newbie (heck, even as a pro—we all go through the same struggles no matter what level we’re at), and I remember getting so frustrated by being told what I “had” to do to be better, but no one ever showed me how. I knew the rules, I knew the advice, I knew “what to do,” but putting all that into practice? Not so easy.

So that’s my focus with my approach to teaching. I break it down, use examples, and explain not only the “rule,” but why it’s there, what it means, and how to understand it so a writer can best use it to help them write the story they want to tell. Even if that means throwing the rule out the window.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

These days, there’s so much information for writers. Fred Koehler’s Ready Chapter 1, which I was the curriculum direction for, and helped him develop the workbook for his classes as well as taught several of them, Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s Writers Helping Writers, KM Weiland’s blog, Helping Authors Become Writers, Jami Gold’s blog, all the Writer’s Digest blogs and sites, and my own Fiction University. There’s just so much out there to help writers.

I think back to when I was querying my novel and had to buy the giant paperback for The Writer’s Market and send snail-mail packages. Sometimes I wonder how much sooner I could have gotten published if I’d had access to everything available now. Today’s writers have a lot of advantages I didn’t have starting out.

One of the places I really see this is in the young writers who email me. I’m talking about fourteen and fifteen years old, sometimes even younger. They’ve read all the blogs, taken the online workshops, gone to the conferences, and some of those writers are producing stellar work for any writer, let alone for their age. Teen writers are even getting book deals with traditional publishers. It’s incredible, and it doesn’t just stop there.

Writers have options on how they want to publish, from traditional to indie and everything in between. They can push for a long career or put out a few books for fun and enjoy it as a hobby. There’s no longer a single, long, hard road to take, and that’s bringing so many new stories and voices into the market, and opening up books to new readers.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Well, the pandemic certainly put a crimp in my creativity, and the site sat dormant for a while. I really slowed down both blogging and writing, stopped doing conferences, and the only interactions I had with fellow writers was virtually. Then my husband was diagnosed with Leukemia and a relate blood disorder, and I stopped blogging altogether for almost a year while we dealt with it all. That can be a kiss of death for a site that had been posting daily articles for over a decade. I’m a big shocked it didn’t fade away to obscurity, to be honest.

My numbers did drop, but most of my readers stuck with me (thanks guys!) I’m starting the slow trek back, now. On the upside, it gave me time to reevaluate what I wanted to do with the site and what my next steps were, and I had the downtime to start that project. It’s a huge undertaking to overhaul a site with as much on it as mine, so it’ll take me well into 2024, but hopefully the new and improved Fiction University will be launched next year.

Contact Info:

• Website: fiction-university.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/janice.hardy.author
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Janice_Hardy