Wish HubPages had a Writing Life niche site

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   B. Leekleyposted 5 years ago

   LetterPile, as best I can figure from the examples shown and the subcategories, is only for original works of creative writing, such as short stories, poems, memoir essays, and so on. I like LetterPile as it is. There is no vertical or niche site at HubPages about the writing life, and that seems to me an unfortunate and inexplicable omission. Subcategories might include (more succinctly expressed): getting more writing done; writing even better; getting published; grammar theory and practice; the hows and whys of writing groups; writing prompts; understanding genres; the business of writing; learning freelance writing; best practices in critiquing creative writing; screenplays as an art form, and so on. It's peculiar that a website created daily by writers has niches for those who are into tattooing, knitting, cars, camping, sports, spirit channeling, or whatever but has nothing for those who are into the art, craft, techniques, and business of writing. Even the best of those articles get left behind at the old HubPages site.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Why couldn't you place these types of hubs in the Education category?

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      daydreamsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      There are articles about this on niche sites. Hobbylark has a section about how to approach creative writing. Toughnickel has articles on the business side of writing. There's probably some on Owlcation too.

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      gerimcclymposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      As a writer, I fully support this idea of having one niche site for all articles related to writing!

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      MizBejabbersposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Some of these niche sites are bringing in more traffic, at least for me, but my last hub, a travelog, was moved to Wanderwisdom, and it immediately went belly up. For three days I got good traffic on the general site, but since it was moved. I've had only three or four comments. I'm wondering when or if they may shelve it as a result. In fact, I wonder if I could ask them to move it back to the general site. However, it may be too late for that now.  I'm not too keen on more niche sites of any kind.

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   5. 86

      B. Leekleyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I discovered by studying the examples shown that hubs about writing go in the Humanities part of the Owlcation niche site. Among the articles recently featured on the Owlcation-Humanities page were: "Four Different Types of Writing Styles: Expository, Descriptive, Persuasive, and Narrative"; "550 Alternative Words for 'Said'"; "How to Write a Book Report", and "Plot Summary and Analysis of The Free Radio by Salman Rushdie". Should there be a Rhetoric subcategory under Humanities?

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   Glenn Stokposted 5 years ago

   It’s intersting that you mention this Brian, because I was concerned about the same thing — especially since I wrote so many tutorial hubs for HubPages that I wish would have a better place than being left behind on HubPages' home site.
   
   I mentioned this to Paul when I saw him at the Maven conference. We had a talk about ideas I had, and I suggested moving those types of hubs to the learning center. However, nothing came of it and I never heard staff mention it again.
   
   I can understand why they might not want hubs in the learning center that are written by Hubbers. Your solution is even better. I second the notion to create a virtical niche site for that purpose, and include subcategories just as you had listed.
   
   Many good Hubbers have written very useful and informative tutorials, and I think it would benefit the entire community to have a special place for them to be found. Of course they would have to be checked for accuracy, and kept up to date. This may be too much to handle, so I don’t expect to see it happen unfortunately.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I'm guessing the reason for this is that this type of article is  mostly for Hubbers, but the team wants to post articles that are for the general public.

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      1. 96

         Glenn Stokposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         I agree with you. I thought of that too. For that reason over the past month I had been working on modifications to my tutorial hubs to make them relate more to the general public — people who might be doing Google searches for writing sites. That might solve that issue, and now I’m planning to submit them to Toughnickel over the next couple of months, one every 14 days.

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            Natalie Frankposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            I don't think the majority of these articles are specifically for Hubbers. The types of things Brian mentions are: getting more writing done; writing even better; getting published; grammar theory and practice; the hows and whys of writing groups; writing prompts; understanding genres; the business of writing; learning freelance writing; best practices in critiquing creative writing; screenplays as an art form etc.  Writing advice, how to's, and resources are big draws on the internet and searches done for this produce umpteen results.  Other content platforms also have categories for writing which from what I've seen are some of the most popular subsites on them.  I'm thinking of platforms like Reddit for example.  Reddit however is not well organized because anyone can create a subreddit and so there tons of overlap between many similar categories.  We could do better than that with a niche site devoted to the writing life.  It would also keep all of the related content in one site (my writing articles are all over the place right now).  I like the idea.   A lot.

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            1. 96

               Glenn Stokposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Yes. A niche site devoted to the writing life would be the ultimate solution.

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      Jesse Drzalposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Where was my Maven conference invite? Wish I were cool enough to kick it with Paul..

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