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1VetaTorres
I am young; I am inexperienced. That's the reality of my situation and thankfully I'm not prideful enough to believe otherwise. I'm not under the illusion that I will be the next great writer or that I will even be published. That being said, I could use advice from writers on how to fully form ideas that could be implemented in novels. I do not lack ideas, they pop into my head at the most random moments of my life - yet I don't know how to transfer these ideas in to writing (or at least writing more than 5 pages on it).
Any advice would be much appreciated :) Thanks!
Any advice would be much appreciated :) Thanks!
2LauraJWRyan
Hello VetaTorres,
My best advice is this: WRITE. Write every day...pick a time, a place, a favorite beverage, no distractions (resist browsing the net, checking email, paying bills, etc...), relax and go with the flow. Write it all out...get it out of your system, that 'bug in your ear' or the 'bee in your bonnet', that seductive voice that whispers to you and says 'what if...' Writing brilliant novels does not happen overnight, it comes with practice, patience, and persistence. The first one you will write won't be your first to publish (I know, it's disappointing)...it might be the fourth one you write to get published the first time, and the first one you write will get published fourth. Or you'll tuck that first manuscript away in a drawer to remind yourself where you started, remember it fondly, and cringe when you pick it up and read it...yet love it, warts n' all. It's maddening, but beautiful...I envy you at the moment, it's all ahead of you still, you have so much to learn, be patient, it will happen. Read. Read the best and even the worst...read almost as much as you write. Read outside of your comfort zone too...read your favorites until they fall apart and you have to buy replacements...keep learning. Keep learning, become brutal with your work, editing is as important as writing it, learn to proofread your work with a fine tooth comb...read it out loud to yourself. Don't lose heart. You might feel like you're the only one in the world doing this, it is a lonely existence, your friends, family, and significant other might not understand you most of the time...other writers can be helpful at times, but sometimes, they're just as lost as you are...you will learn so much about what you're made of...and some day, after much bleakness and hard work, you'll say 'wow'...
I'm in the 'wow' part at the moment, I'm looking at you, as you are now, and thinking...remembering, I was once in your shoes. I haven't forgotten. You are on a journey VetaTorres, I wish you piles of luck, work hard, be true to yourself, and trust that inner voice that urges you along...
Best wishes,
Laura
My best advice is this: WRITE. Write every day...pick a time, a place, a favorite beverage, no distractions (resist browsing the net, checking email, paying bills, etc...), relax and go with the flow. Write it all out...get it out of your system, that 'bug in your ear' or the 'bee in your bonnet', that seductive voice that whispers to you and says 'what if...' Writing brilliant novels does not happen overnight, it comes with practice, patience, and persistence. The first one you will write won't be your first to publish (I know, it's disappointing)...it might be the fourth one you write to get published the first time, and the first one you write will get published fourth. Or you'll tuck that first manuscript away in a drawer to remind yourself where you started, remember it fondly, and cringe when you pick it up and read it...yet love it, warts n' all. It's maddening, but beautiful...I envy you at the moment, it's all ahead of you still, you have so much to learn, be patient, it will happen. Read. Read the best and even the worst...read almost as much as you write. Read outside of your comfort zone too...read your favorites until they fall apart and you have to buy replacements...keep learning. Keep learning, become brutal with your work, editing is as important as writing it, learn to proofread your work with a fine tooth comb...read it out loud to yourself. Don't lose heart. You might feel like you're the only one in the world doing this, it is a lonely existence, your friends, family, and significant other might not understand you most of the time...other writers can be helpful at times, but sometimes, they're just as lost as you are...you will learn so much about what you're made of...and some day, after much bleakness and hard work, you'll say 'wow'...
I'm in the 'wow' part at the moment, I'm looking at you, as you are now, and thinking...remembering, I was once in your shoes. I haven't forgotten. You are on a journey VetaTorres, I wish you piles of luck, work hard, be true to yourself, and trust that inner voice that urges you along...
Best wishes,
Laura
3GaryBabb
Welcome Newbie Veta,
You ask an interesting question.
I am not sure if I speak for most writers, but I believe few writers have fully formed ideas when they begin. It is important to write them down or record the ideas in general so you or your characters will remember them later. For me, my first task is to create the characters. Once they become alive, THEY will use the ideas in their story. It never ceases to amaze me how the characters direct the story and the writing. Watching the ideas form on the page is half the enjoyment.
I'm not sure if this helps.
You ask an interesting question.
I am not sure if I speak for most writers, but I believe few writers have fully formed ideas when they begin. It is important to write them down or record the ideas in general so you or your characters will remember them later. For me, my first task is to create the characters. Once they become alive, THEY will use the ideas in their story. It never ceases to amaze me how the characters direct the story and the writing. Watching the ideas form on the page is half the enjoyment.
I'm not sure if this helps.
4proximity1
I second all the insights in Laura's post (#2). And I'd add extra emphasis to her comment,
"Read. Read the best and even the worst...read almost as much as you write. Read outside of your comfort zone too..."
I think it would be hard to over-emphasize that. In particular, I'd urge you to beware of just about anything and everything that seems easy. Books that you can breeze through painlessly, which you find it not the least bit necessary to struggle to make you way in, are hazards. Simply, "beware of the easy". Read the authors whose works put demands on your intellect, whose work challenges you and avoid those whose work asks and requires nothing more than superficial time, attention and investment. If you breeze through a novel of two, three or four hundred pages in a day or a few hours, I wouldn't count that work as having had much value. The better the work, the less you can breeze through it like it's an afternoon's lark.
The trouble is, almost everything in contemporary culture works to sabotage the best efforts to beware of what comes easily. People shun and encourage in others the shunning of whatever costs them effort to gain; lots of great works of literature are considered flawed because they have 'too many words'. Or the words are too big, etc. Why prepare food from scratch when you can buy something ready-to-heat-and-eat from the frrozen-goods aisle? Why read a 'hard' book when there are so many easy ones? Why submit your work to the critical eye of an editor and major publisher --who might, very likely, reject it---when you can have it published yourself? Indeed, why do anything which is damned difficult when it's so much easier to avoid those things? That, in spades, is the culture in which we live. And for you, such thinking is pure poison, or so I urge that you view it that way.
So, when you write that, "I hope to one day write brilliant novels,or at least ones that people like," you may discover that you have to choose between writing brilliant novels or writing ones that people like.
I also view with a bit of scepticism the notion that simply sitting down to the writing table and writing regularly and routinely for X minutes or pages per day can, by itself alone, produce the material from which you can eventually fashion a desirable work unless you are able to "see" within the rough drafts of your regular exercises the latent meanings, the real motives and puposes which prompted and provoked you to write the passages you wrote. In a sense, that is what I think proves the most challenging task. You have, as you say, no shortage of ideas, of things you'd like to say, and these should by every good reason comprise the stuff of an interesting story, or should become a feature within a novel. All of that is quite well and good. But it is one thing to have these ideas and even to write them down. As important as that is, it is something else to actually "see" what is and was behind them--to grasp their import for you. All those ideas spring from your bubbling consciousness, semi-consciousness and unconsciousness. You may never (nor need you necessarily) discover everything about why they arose and, with it, what they "mean", but it seems to me that in order to make something of them that not only you but others, too, will recognize as having meaning and literary worth, you have to at some point in the process, whether it's in re-writing, or in preliminary note-making, master, grasp, at least partially, the real point and purpose of the raw ideas' occurrence, and in them something(s) which is (are) unifying and revealing. Again, whatever it is or seems at first or second or third view to be 'the point', the 'hidden meaning'---and isn't it, wouldn't it be, 'hidden' after all from your ready waking consciousness? Otherwise, it would seem instead that the work would consist not in the pains-taking effort of 'bringing out' a meaning that remains wholly or partly obscured but one which resembles "taking dictation" from your consciousness---those early views may not in fact turn out to be the most insightful understandings of what your notes and re-writes were really about and for. And, yet, of course, not only does it seem that a number of fiction writers do this---simply take dictation from their consciousness---it appears from their writings that they do it, too.
Then, in and part of all that, there is the all-important elements of your own particular gifts in expression and insight. For that, you're required again to beware what strikes you as easy and what "everyone will find resonates with their experiences, too." Oddly, the trick is not to write (or refashion) what develops from your execise drafts into whatever it is you imagine others will most readily identify with their own inner lives or experiences, but, rather, those things which are truest to your peculiar view of things.
Obviously, many writers (as they're the first to admit) simply have no very clear idea of what they'll write about or "where it will go" when they start. You do not necessarily have to know all and exactly about what it is you mean to do in your story or novel--unless it so happens that you in particular do need that clarity of vision in order to advance beyond the ideas which are already coming to you with little or no applied effort. Others have a very clear idea of their pupose, themes, actions and the "arugments" of their story and characters. Worthy writing can come from either approach or any of dozens of different approaches which combine aspects of each.
By the way, I'm also at the 'I just may have had an interesting idea for a story or novel' stage. To arrive, I spent the past eight years reading voraciously and wracking my brain for insights into my own reasonings, needs and motivations. I had to also gain some insights which were won only through stubborn effort and attacks from numerous varied angles. After reading some two dozen books by particularly brilliant writers, and piecing together what was less-than-obviously running, scattered and haphazardly through their seemingly disparate works, I began to gain the glimmer of an organizing idea---which I noted in four words on my desk calendar for that day. Eight years of concerted, deliberate reading, with an aim and purpose to better see and understand what's going on around me, and I got what I hope may be a fairly decent idea.
But I'm a very slow learner. You might possess genius and skills for writing about which possession I can only dream. These things are strange and work that way. There's absolutely no reason why you might not be a genuinely brilliant novelist-in-the-making. Only time will tell about that.
"Read. Read the best and even the worst...read almost as much as you write. Read outside of your comfort zone too..."
I think it would be hard to over-emphasize that. In particular, I'd urge you to beware of just about anything and everything that seems easy. Books that you can breeze through painlessly, which you find it not the least bit necessary to struggle to make you way in, are hazards. Simply, "beware of the easy". Read the authors whose works put demands on your intellect, whose work challenges you and avoid those whose work asks and requires nothing more than superficial time, attention and investment. If you breeze through a novel of two, three or four hundred pages in a day or a few hours, I wouldn't count that work as having had much value. The better the work, the less you can breeze through it like it's an afternoon's lark.
The trouble is, almost everything in contemporary culture works to sabotage the best efforts to beware of what comes easily. People shun and encourage in others the shunning of whatever costs them effort to gain; lots of great works of literature are considered flawed because they have 'too many words'. Or the words are too big, etc. Why prepare food from scratch when you can buy something ready-to-heat-and-eat from the frrozen-goods aisle? Why read a 'hard' book when there are so many easy ones? Why submit your work to the critical eye of an editor and major publisher --who might, very likely, reject it---when you can have it published yourself? Indeed, why do anything which is damned difficult when it's so much easier to avoid those things? That, in spades, is the culture in which we live. And for you, such thinking is pure poison, or so I urge that you view it that way.
So, when you write that, "I hope to one day write brilliant novels,or at least ones that people like," you may discover that you have to choose between writing brilliant novels or writing ones that people like.
I also view with a bit of scepticism the notion that simply sitting down to the writing table and writing regularly and routinely for X minutes or pages per day can, by itself alone, produce the material from which you can eventually fashion a desirable work unless you are able to "see" within the rough drafts of your regular exercises the latent meanings, the real motives and puposes which prompted and provoked you to write the passages you wrote. In a sense, that is what I think proves the most challenging task. You have, as you say, no shortage of ideas, of things you'd like to say, and these should by every good reason comprise the stuff of an interesting story, or should become a feature within a novel. All of that is quite well and good. But it is one thing to have these ideas and even to write them down. As important as that is, it is something else to actually "see" what is and was behind them--to grasp their import for you. All those ideas spring from your bubbling consciousness, semi-consciousness and unconsciousness. You may never (nor need you necessarily) discover everything about why they arose and, with it, what they "mean", but it seems to me that in order to make something of them that not only you but others, too, will recognize as having meaning and literary worth, you have to at some point in the process, whether it's in re-writing, or in preliminary note-making, master, grasp, at least partially, the real point and purpose of the raw ideas' occurrence, and in them something(s) which is (are) unifying and revealing. Again, whatever it is or seems at first or second or third view to be 'the point', the 'hidden meaning'---and isn't it, wouldn't it be, 'hidden' after all from your ready waking consciousness? Otherwise, it would seem instead that the work would consist not in the pains-taking effort of 'bringing out' a meaning that remains wholly or partly obscured but one which resembles "taking dictation" from your consciousness---those early views may not in fact turn out to be the most insightful understandings of what your notes and re-writes were really about and for. And, yet, of course, not only does it seem that a number of fiction writers do this---simply take dictation from their consciousness---it appears from their writings that they do it, too.
Then, in and part of all that, there is the all-important elements of your own particular gifts in expression and insight. For that, you're required again to beware what strikes you as easy and what "everyone will find resonates with their experiences, too." Oddly, the trick is not to write (or refashion) what develops from your execise drafts into whatever it is you imagine others will most readily identify with their own inner lives or experiences, but, rather, those things which are truest to your peculiar view of things.
Obviously, many writers (as they're the first to admit) simply have no very clear idea of what they'll write about or "where it will go" when they start. You do not necessarily have to know all and exactly about what it is you mean to do in your story or novel--unless it so happens that you in particular do need that clarity of vision in order to advance beyond the ideas which are already coming to you with little or no applied effort. Others have a very clear idea of their pupose, themes, actions and the "arugments" of their story and characters. Worthy writing can come from either approach or any of dozens of different approaches which combine aspects of each.
By the way, I'm also at the 'I just may have had an interesting idea for a story or novel' stage. To arrive, I spent the past eight years reading voraciously and wracking my brain for insights into my own reasonings, needs and motivations. I had to also gain some insights which were won only through stubborn effort and attacks from numerous varied angles. After reading some two dozen books by particularly brilliant writers, and piecing together what was less-than-obviously running, scattered and haphazardly through their seemingly disparate works, I began to gain the glimmer of an organizing idea---which I noted in four words on my desk calendar for that day. Eight years of concerted, deliberate reading, with an aim and purpose to better see and understand what's going on around me, and I got what I hope may be a fairly decent idea.
But I'm a very slow learner. You might possess genius and skills for writing about which possession I can only dream. These things are strange and work that way. There's absolutely no reason why you might not be a genuinely brilliant novelist-in-the-making. Only time will tell about that.
5LauraJWRyan
#4
A most excellent post!
A most excellent post!
6proximity1
> 5:
Thank you for the compliment. It means something coming from someone who I think it's clear has the genuine knowledge and insights of a dedicated working writer who' s actually written stuff!, unlike myself.
You obviously have well in mind a fine understanding of the things which, while I'm familiar with them by description, I still haven't (as yet) gained the familiarity that you have gained from practice. I imagine your book is very likely well worth a very serious look for a demanding reader. Reading your writer's advice made me curious to read it.
Thank you for the compliment. It means something coming from someone who I think it's clear has the genuine knowledge and insights of a dedicated working writer who' s actually written stuff!, unlike myself.
You obviously have well in mind a fine understanding of the things which, while I'm familiar with them by description, I still haven't (as yet) gained the familiarity that you have gained from practice. I imagine your book is very likely well worth a very serious look for a demanding reader. Reading your writer's advice made me curious to read it.
7VetaTorres
Thanks for the advice Laura, Gary, & Proximity
I've been reading voraciously since about the fourth grade when my mom told me she would only take my to see Harry Potter if I read the book first -Thanks Mom and J.K. Rowling! Since then I've read just about anything I can get my hands on. In eighth grade when kids thought reading for fun was "geeky" there I was with To Kill a Mockingbird and Pride and Prejudice... I fell in to an unfortunate slump sophomore year of high school but then gradually picked up speed again. I admit I have read the entire Twilight Saga -no offense to Stephenie Meyer- but I know exactly how I don't want to write. Lately I've decided to not waste my time on books that are not good or cannot keep my interest, no need spending my energy on an "ehhh its ok" book when I could read "wow that left me breathless" or "Man I wish I could write like that!" type novel.
Last summer I really started trying to write anything that came to mind and it felt really good. I stopped during the year; school and homework comes first of course. But now this summer I can't write - I suppose that's called writer's block. Everytime I sit down to write, I think "And why does this matter?" I cannot answer it.
But I feel deep inside that I need to say something to someone, through my writing. I'm prone to self-doubt and I am transitioning from high school to college. I suppose what I need is to relax and let life take me where it will, no need worrying over something that hasn't happened yet.... lol I'm lost in thought... that would make my English teacher senior year very happy, that I am at least thinking...
I've been reading voraciously since about the fourth grade when my mom told me she would only take my to see Harry Potter if I read the book first -Thanks Mom and J.K. Rowling! Since then I've read just about anything I can get my hands on. In eighth grade when kids thought reading for fun was "geeky" there I was with To Kill a Mockingbird and Pride and Prejudice... I fell in to an unfortunate slump sophomore year of high school but then gradually picked up speed again. I admit I have read the entire Twilight Saga -no offense to Stephenie Meyer- but I know exactly how I don't want to write. Lately I've decided to not waste my time on books that are not good or cannot keep my interest, no need spending my energy on an "ehhh its ok" book when I could read "wow that left me breathless" or "Man I wish I could write like that!" type novel.
Last summer I really started trying to write anything that came to mind and it felt really good. I stopped during the year; school and homework comes first of course. But now this summer I can't write - I suppose that's called writer's block. Everytime I sit down to write, I think "And why does this matter?" I cannot answer it.
But I feel deep inside that I need to say something to someone, through my writing. I'm prone to self-doubt and I am transitioning from high school to college. I suppose what I need is to relax and let life take me where it will, no need worrying over something that hasn't happened yet.... lol I'm lost in thought... that would make my English teacher senior year very happy, that I am at least thinking...
8proximity1
> 7:
Veta,
There's something of a note of impatience in your comments. You say you feel a need to write, to give vent to your thoughts but they aren't cooperating.
Some writers work on the theory that they must faithfully follow a writing routine, so that each day at about the same time, with the same familiar surroundings, they sit down and face their work---if it has begun, and there are pages in progress or, otherwise a blank page. And they've done this long enough that it is a regular habit for them; not only that, but they have also already spent some time--sometimes a lot--getting to that point. Others don't work that way; maybe they have tried it and for whatever reason, it either hasn't worked or they found it isn't what produces the kind of results they are looking for.
As young as you are, aren't you also creating not just a "writer" but also yourself as well? And isn't that a large order to take on all at once? People differ, of course and I've known someone who at 19 had more maturity and worldly knowledge and experience than most people have a twice that age--certainly more than I had at the time and I was several years older. But she didn't have much of anything to do with the fact that she was that sort of person; she didn't choose to be the way she was, she simply was, and had about her a character which simply knew no 'stops'. She saw the world very plainly but wouldn't--maybe couldn't--abide its constraints and simply refused to follow along with conventional life. At the same time, much about her daily existence was neither dramatic nor thrilling nor glamorous --except in the way that it's dramatic, thrilling and glamorous to strike out at so young an age and leave everyone behind and depend on one's own wits to survive. She did that and I'm sure it was more often hard and wearying than thrilling. It was hers, though, bohemian, out of the ordinary and full of an impulsive quality which amazed and fascinated me.
I don't describe her as a model for you. It would be a mistake to take her as such and probably useless in any case. You don't need a model so much as the time to figure out for yourself who you might be and who you want to be from among the possibilities open to you.
Those authors who impress you didn't just sit down one day out of the blue and produce remarkable work. They arrived at that--usually-- through a long effort which contained a lot of struggle and ups and downs.
If the words won't come, and you can't force them, then turn your attention to other of the indispensible aspects of building yourself and yourself as a writer: living, reading, thinking, exploring, trying stuff and sometimes failing at it, trying again and sometimes succeeding at it. That's my advice. Whether it will prove useful to you I don't know. But I think part of what's bothering you at the moment is that things don't happen on command, at the time, in the way and the place that you want them to. Instead, they require you to be patient. You can fight that I suppose, and maybe you're the sort of person who has to fight it. If that helps produce something interesting on the page, I guess the fight is useful.
My own fights are for the ideas and insights that might eventually provide me the resources with which to write what I want to say. I don't find that struggle so much at the writing table as in the pages of the books I read, and from which, along with experiences outside of books and reading, I hope to be able to develop something worthwhile. If I don't have a thought on which to focus and work, I don't stay at the table. I go do something, read, visit some place, think of other topics, issues, problems, etc. But I already spent years figuring out --and accepting---the sort of person I am; in the process, I learned that writing would be important for me and that it would be a great source of satisfaction if I could figure out how to do it. Well, I'm still at work figuring it out; but I'm much, much less a mystery to myself than I once was. That proved to be the priority task for me. If I'm now closer to writing something and something that is better, worthier, it may be because partly due to spending the time --willingly or not--to figure out who I am and what I'm interested in trying to do. Or this is all the fond rationalization of an inveterate slow learner.
Veta,
There's something of a note of impatience in your comments. You say you feel a need to write, to give vent to your thoughts but they aren't cooperating.
Some writers work on the theory that they must faithfully follow a writing routine, so that each day at about the same time, with the same familiar surroundings, they sit down and face their work---if it has begun, and there are pages in progress or, otherwise a blank page. And they've done this long enough that it is a regular habit for them; not only that, but they have also already spent some time--sometimes a lot--getting to that point. Others don't work that way; maybe they have tried it and for whatever reason, it either hasn't worked or they found it isn't what produces the kind of results they are looking for.
As young as you are, aren't you also creating not just a "writer" but also yourself as well? And isn't that a large order to take on all at once? People differ, of course and I've known someone who at 19 had more maturity and worldly knowledge and experience than most people have a twice that age--certainly more than I had at the time and I was several years older. But she didn't have much of anything to do with the fact that she was that sort of person; she didn't choose to be the way she was, she simply was, and had about her a character which simply knew no 'stops'. She saw the world very plainly but wouldn't--maybe couldn't--abide its constraints and simply refused to follow along with conventional life. At the same time, much about her daily existence was neither dramatic nor thrilling nor glamorous --except in the way that it's dramatic, thrilling and glamorous to strike out at so young an age and leave everyone behind and depend on one's own wits to survive. She did that and I'm sure it was more often hard and wearying than thrilling. It was hers, though, bohemian, out of the ordinary and full of an impulsive quality which amazed and fascinated me.
I don't describe her as a model for you. It would be a mistake to take her as such and probably useless in any case. You don't need a model so much as the time to figure out for yourself who you might be and who you want to be from among the possibilities open to you.
Those authors who impress you didn't just sit down one day out of the blue and produce remarkable work. They arrived at that--usually-- through a long effort which contained a lot of struggle and ups and downs.
If the words won't come, and you can't force them, then turn your attention to other of the indispensible aspects of building yourself and yourself as a writer: living, reading, thinking, exploring, trying stuff and sometimes failing at it, trying again and sometimes succeeding at it. That's my advice. Whether it will prove useful to you I don't know. But I think part of what's bothering you at the moment is that things don't happen on command, at the time, in the way and the place that you want them to. Instead, they require you to be patient. You can fight that I suppose, and maybe you're the sort of person who has to fight it. If that helps produce something interesting on the page, I guess the fight is useful.
My own fights are for the ideas and insights that might eventually provide me the resources with which to write what I want to say. I don't find that struggle so much at the writing table as in the pages of the books I read, and from which, along with experiences outside of books and reading, I hope to be able to develop something worthwhile. If I don't have a thought on which to focus and work, I don't stay at the table. I go do something, read, visit some place, think of other topics, issues, problems, etc. But I already spent years figuring out --and accepting---the sort of person I am; in the process, I learned that writing would be important for me and that it would be a great source of satisfaction if I could figure out how to do it. Well, I'm still at work figuring it out; but I'm much, much less a mystery to myself than I once was. That proved to be the priority task for me. If I'm now closer to writing something and something that is better, worthier, it may be because partly due to spending the time --willingly or not--to figure out who I am and what I'm interested in trying to do. Or this is all the fond rationalization of an inveterate slow learner.
9LauraJWRyan
I couldn't have said that better myself Proximity... becoming the writer you want to be is a rocky road of self-discovery and learning, it's truly an amazing transformation once it happens. I'll tell you a little bit about my journey...
I've always wanted to write, always felt torn between being an artist and a writer. I had many false starts with stories, and wrote in journals about my thought process. I went through a long dry spell after graduating from college (I went to art school to study painting and art history), life happened and I went with the flow of getting married, having a baby, working to pay the bills, buying one house, then selling that one to move to the dream house in the country...I'm 48 years old now, and I only started writing my serious stuff eleven years ago. At first, I kicked myself for waiting for so long to do this because I felt so surrounded by the youthful MFA recipients that I feared that I was too late to start. But no...I wouldn't change a thing... looking at those false starts and old journals, I realized that I needed the life experiences and maturity from which to write. The characters and their stories were there, forming. They were stories I told to myself while rocking my colicky baby, doing housework, cooking dinner, weeding in the garden, painting a painting, scraping old paint off the porch floor, or being a passenger on a long road trip. I didn't start writing anything down again until 1999 and then my life changed, I hit the sweet spot that every writer hopes for. It was weird like I was going through a second adolescence, I thought I was going mad, when actually, it was just the creative flood gates opening and all of this stuff in my head wanted out at the same time. Between 1999-2001 I started 4 novels, by 2003 they were finished in their rough forms, and I have been in the process of finishing the editing/proofreading process ever since (happily, loving every word, every character, every surprise). I have two more in the works, but they're "on hold" until I shepherd the last two of the original four through their final stages. It's been a long, long frustrating and beautiful road. I have my own vision of my books and I wasn't finding what I wanted with the traditional publishing route, and no one wanted to "gamble" since I'm not writing for a market flooded with books that are 'easy' that would guarantee a quick buck. I take on some tough issues that will make people squirm and I've been known to use some rough language, my characters can be prickly, unsettled, opinionated, weird, make wrong choices when they should know better...good grief, they're too real! With that said, I decided to form my own imprint and went the POD route. Now I know some people still frown on this, and for good reason, there are lots of books being self-published that have not been properly edited, the writing not "matured", or the book sloppily formatted, poorly designed. I did it because it's about the control of my vision, and I'm probably too fussy in that perfectionist vein that would drive a publisher mad...so I just drive my Fred crazy when we're in the final page proofs of my book and I'm still making changes to the PDF...oh, to hear that man grumble every time he has to open InDesign! And my insistence that my new book must have a YELLOW cover... and it's such a beautiful yellow painting that I made for it! I don't think a traditional publisher would put up with that crap from me, a middle-aged white woman, an ordinary nobody from Upstate New York. The way I look at it from my size 6 1/2's, life's too short, I've worked hard, and I'm comfortable with the fact that I can't please everybody. Not everyone "gets" me (tho' I think, Proximity, you do). I believe I've done a good thing, I put my books into the hands of readers who have never heard of me, and they discover something new, my unique voice. It's been a year since I published the first book, and so far so good. We'll see what readers think of the second one, it's funny how I'm confident about it while I'm working on it, but now that it's out of the nest, I'm holding my breath, bracing for the worst...(Virginia Woolf, in her diary, expressed her anxiety about new books in the same way. I highly recommend A Writer's Diary to anyone who wants to be a writer.)
If you want to be a writer, be a writer, practice it, you can't force it, it will come with time. Keep reading, VetaTorres, practice writing, keep a journal, write your observations, even if it's just about the weather. Read, read, read.
Proximity, I think you're on the edge... if only I could take my finger and touch you, I think you'd tip and you'll fly just fine...
When you're writing, be true to yourself, always. Self-doubt is a stinker we all will face no matter where we are in the journey. My mantra has been: Practice, Patience, Persistence...it has gotten me through these last eleven years...it keeps me going forward.
I've always wanted to write, always felt torn between being an artist and a writer. I had many false starts with stories, and wrote in journals about my thought process. I went through a long dry spell after graduating from college (I went to art school to study painting and art history), life happened and I went with the flow of getting married, having a baby, working to pay the bills, buying one house, then selling that one to move to the dream house in the country...I'm 48 years old now, and I only started writing my serious stuff eleven years ago. At first, I kicked myself for waiting for so long to do this because I felt so surrounded by the youthful MFA recipients that I feared that I was too late to start. But no...I wouldn't change a thing... looking at those false starts and old journals, I realized that I needed the life experiences and maturity from which to write. The characters and their stories were there, forming. They were stories I told to myself while rocking my colicky baby, doing housework, cooking dinner, weeding in the garden, painting a painting, scraping old paint off the porch floor, or being a passenger on a long road trip. I didn't start writing anything down again until 1999 and then my life changed, I hit the sweet spot that every writer hopes for. It was weird like I was going through a second adolescence, I thought I was going mad, when actually, it was just the creative flood gates opening and all of this stuff in my head wanted out at the same time. Between 1999-2001 I started 4 novels, by 2003 they were finished in their rough forms, and I have been in the process of finishing the editing/proofreading process ever since (happily, loving every word, every character, every surprise). I have two more in the works, but they're "on hold" until I shepherd the last two of the original four through their final stages. It's been a long, long frustrating and beautiful road. I have my own vision of my books and I wasn't finding what I wanted with the traditional publishing route, and no one wanted to "gamble" since I'm not writing for a market flooded with books that are 'easy' that would guarantee a quick buck. I take on some tough issues that will make people squirm and I've been known to use some rough language, my characters can be prickly, unsettled, opinionated, weird, make wrong choices when they should know better...good grief, they're too real! With that said, I decided to form my own imprint and went the POD route. Now I know some people still frown on this, and for good reason, there are lots of books being self-published that have not been properly edited, the writing not "matured", or the book sloppily formatted, poorly designed. I did it because it's about the control of my vision, and I'm probably too fussy in that perfectionist vein that would drive a publisher mad...so I just drive my Fred crazy when we're in the final page proofs of my book and I'm still making changes to the PDF...oh, to hear that man grumble every time he has to open InDesign! And my insistence that my new book must have a YELLOW cover... and it's such a beautiful yellow painting that I made for it! I don't think a traditional publisher would put up with that crap from me, a middle-aged white woman, an ordinary nobody from Upstate New York. The way I look at it from my size 6 1/2's, life's too short, I've worked hard, and I'm comfortable with the fact that I can't please everybody. Not everyone "gets" me (tho' I think, Proximity, you do). I believe I've done a good thing, I put my books into the hands of readers who have never heard of me, and they discover something new, my unique voice. It's been a year since I published the first book, and so far so good. We'll see what readers think of the second one, it's funny how I'm confident about it while I'm working on it, but now that it's out of the nest, I'm holding my breath, bracing for the worst...(Virginia Woolf, in her diary, expressed her anxiety about new books in the same way. I highly recommend A Writer's Diary to anyone who wants to be a writer.)
If you want to be a writer, be a writer, practice it, you can't force it, it will come with time. Keep reading, VetaTorres, practice writing, keep a journal, write your observations, even if it's just about the weather. Read, read, read.
Proximity, I think you're on the edge... if only I could take my finger and touch you, I think you'd tip and you'll fly just fine...
When you're writing, be true to yourself, always. Self-doubt is a stinker we all will face no matter where we are in the journey. My mantra has been: Practice, Patience, Persistence...it has gotten me through these last eleven years...it keeps me going forward.
10VetaTorres
Thank you both so much. It's hard to talk to people who aren't writer's about writing -I mean my mom is my best friend but she justs says "You're a wonderful writer, baby" and although that always makes me feel good its not exactly what i need to hear.
I am impatient. I want college to start already, I want to meet new & interesting people, I want to travel the world (since i went to China, i'm itching to travel again). I want alot of things and like a little kid a Christmas I want to open my presents up before I'm suppose to. I have an idea for a novel, I've had it for awhile but I know that I'm not mature enough yet to confront it and that if I wrote it now it wouldn't be as poetic and literary as I'd like it. So, I little it swim in the back of my mind while I impatiently sit in front of a blank page...
New resolution: read lots of Good novels and do quick writes... that way I can find my voice... I've heard that some writer's go through a kind of "copy-cat" phase until they find their niche...
I am impatient. I want college to start already, I want to meet new & interesting people, I want to travel the world (since i went to China, i'm itching to travel again). I want alot of things and like a little kid a Christmas I want to open my presents up before I'm suppose to. I have an idea for a novel, I've had it for awhile but I know that I'm not mature enough yet to confront it and that if I wrote it now it wouldn't be as poetic and literary as I'd like it. So, I little it swim in the back of my mind while I impatiently sit in front of a blank page...
New resolution: read lots of Good novels and do quick writes... that way I can find my voice... I've heard that some writer's go through a kind of "copy-cat" phase until they find their niche...
11riani1
I'm not sure if it's necessarily "copy-cat", but you fall in love with someone's style, so you emulate them. That's why so many books try to sound like Hemingway, once Hemingway was held up as the ideal style.
Maybe you can be the Next Hemingway, maybe it's just a useful step along the way to finding the way that works for you. Don't worry if your favorite sentence structure doesn't fit what people put forward as the ideal style.
You're going to have to trust yourself a lot. It took a long time for me to fine tune the youngster out of my writing--but there is absolutely nothing wrong with my writing then, it's just what I was doing when I was in my teens. Some of my earliest stuff I've burnt, but a lot I've kept, because I love re-reading and seeing the bones of the good stuff that were making their presence known as I figured things out.
Read a lot of stuff. I just finished a book by a favorite author of mine--and I didn't like it. I much prefer her mysteries to her gothic romances, but every now and then I read one of the romances to get a feel for what she's doing. I really didn't like the main character, but I found myself reading it to study how to present a character who I personally disliked as a sympathetic person. So although the book is going to the used book store--yay, credit!--it had its uses.
I personally don't worry too much about finding the underlying theme of a story or looking for the deeper meaning. Any honestly portrayed tale of life should pull the truth of existence along with it. But you do need to be willing to show that truth. I went through a period where I wondered if I was glorifying violence--I write a lot of thrillers and their ilk--and I realized that violence is part and parcel of the world and what matters is how my characters dealt with it.
The best thing is when you write something down that even surprises you--hopefully with its truth or beauty or simple cleverness. It's very nice to look at those bits in the future and think, "I may know what I'm doing with this."
Maybe you can be the Next Hemingway, maybe it's just a useful step along the way to finding the way that works for you. Don't worry if your favorite sentence structure doesn't fit what people put forward as the ideal style.
You're going to have to trust yourself a lot. It took a long time for me to fine tune the youngster out of my writing--but there is absolutely nothing wrong with my writing then, it's just what I was doing when I was in my teens. Some of my earliest stuff I've burnt, but a lot I've kept, because I love re-reading and seeing the bones of the good stuff that were making their presence known as I figured things out.
Read a lot of stuff. I just finished a book by a favorite author of mine--and I didn't like it. I much prefer her mysteries to her gothic romances, but every now and then I read one of the romances to get a feel for what she's doing. I really didn't like the main character, but I found myself reading it to study how to present a character who I personally disliked as a sympathetic person. So although the book is going to the used book store--yay, credit!--it had its uses.
I personally don't worry too much about finding the underlying theme of a story or looking for the deeper meaning. Any honestly portrayed tale of life should pull the truth of existence along with it. But you do need to be willing to show that truth. I went through a period where I wondered if I was glorifying violence--I write a lot of thrillers and their ilk--and I realized that violence is part and parcel of the world and what matters is how my characters dealt with it.
The best thing is when you write something down that even surprises you--hopefully with its truth or beauty or simple cleverness. It's very nice to look at those bits in the future and think, "I may know what I'm doing with this."
12ajsomerset
Everyone goes through copycat phases. This is how we learn.
In almost every other field, we accept that people learn by imitating. Yet young writers often expect to be original from the get-go. The fact is, you imitate one person, and then another, and then the next, and along the way you find things that work for you and discard the things that don't. This is why the two most important rules are to read widely (to absorb lots of influences) and to write lots (to expunge them). Eventually, you come out sounding like you.
In almost every other field, we accept that people learn by imitating. Yet young writers often expect to be original from the get-go. The fact is, you imitate one person, and then another, and then the next, and along the way you find things that work for you and discard the things that don't. This is why the two most important rules are to read widely (to absorb lots of influences) and to write lots (to expunge them). Eventually, you come out sounding like you.
13GaryBabb
# 11 (The best thing is when you write something down that even surprises you)
I love this when it happens. When I write I become the character, and they often surprise and even startle me. Sometimes I stop, look at my fingers and say, "Where the hell did that come from?" Often this provides great motivation for me to write. I write just to see what the characters will do next or how a scene will end. I love becoming embedded in the story.
I love this when it happens. When I write I become the character, and they often surprise and even startle me. Sometimes I stop, look at my fingers and say, "Where the hell did that come from?" Often this provides great motivation for me to write. I write just to see what the characters will do next or how a scene will end. I love becoming embedded in the story.
14GaryBabb
Veta,
It is not all hard work; it can be fun. The first time you get fan mail ... well, it's worth all the hard work. hehe
It is not all hard work; it can be fun. The first time you get fan mail ... well, it's worth all the hard work. hehe
15riani1
Feedback rules. Not only did some stranger take the trouble to read what you wrote, but *they liked it!*
16LauraJWRyan
So true...goodness knows, if you don't love what you're doing, you wouldn't be doing it... it is hard work, but it's what you call a labor of love. Writing and publishing books is like owning a horse, you love them, but they're a lot of work, and some of it isn't most people's idea of a good time (I've shoveled enough horse manure in my time to know this to be true!)
Little notes from readers who love what they read, or even better, are pleasantly surprised by what is contained between the covers and must tell me about it are always a plus!
I have a book signing coming up next Saturday at our little art gallery (with a reading at 3PM), I'm very excited to see what happens...I really do love meeting readers, it's going to be a good time. (I hope I have enough books!)
Little notes from readers who love what they read, or even better, are pleasantly surprised by what is contained between the covers and must tell me about it are always a plus!
I have a book signing coming up next Saturday at our little art gallery (with a reading at 3PM), I'm very excited to see what happens...I really do love meeting readers, it's going to be a good time. (I hope I have enough books!)
17proximity1
I agree, too, very much with the comments by Gary, riani and ajsomerset concerning the powerful effect of being surprised by the unexpected insights that can sometimes happen in the course of writing and re-writing; and on the matter of modeling style on the writers one admires.
And, Laura's comments reminded me of an after-thought I had; it occurred to me to mention that one of the really difficult consequences of our times comes from the mediocrity-creep which is now apparently well installed even in important publishing houses. What that means in effect is that a major publisher's acceptance of a manuscript is no longer as sound an indication of its quality as once was fairly often the case. I don't mean that big important houses never published mediocre stuff from time to time. Of course they did. The point is rather that, just as popular standards have perhaps always done, what once wouldn't have passed muster other than as a real fluke, is readily deemed quite "salable" on today's market. And rather than rejecting it, the publishers (who really need to sell everything they can because the reading market for commercial paperbacks and hardcovers has shrunk so) think, "Yes, we can sell this," rather than, "Yes, this is good."
I can hear some say, "What!? You mean now I have to be even tougher on my work's quality than the publishing house editor or its reader/critic? I have to question their acceptance of it as being possibly more a matter of the salability than the actual quality? What the...!?!"
But, well, what can I say? If you look not only at what's published today but, moreover, what is really selling remarkably well, the simple fact is that publishers aren't and can't be expected to be immune to temptations to publish what they're perhaps right to think will sell very well regardless of its literary quality. Sixty or seventy years ago and more, this wasn't anything like the problem it is today and the reason is simple and obvious: the tastes of the reading public are nothing like what they were fifty, or sixty and seventy years ago.
That has to be understood though in its context. Were there writers of the calibre of, say, Stephanie Meyers being published fifty to seventy years ago? In a relative sense, you could argue that, yes, there were such: in that then, as now, there were some works published which were the rough --very loosely speaking--equivalents for their time, as far as relative quality is concerned, to a series such as "Twilight". And , in their popularity, as a proportion of the whole reading public, those works and their authors may also have enjoyed rather large audiences--thus, they were real money-makers for the publisher. The difference, however, is that there was also another very large and very important readership whose tastes were much more demanding and discriminating then. Today, the relative size of that same discriminating reading population has shrunk dramatically and this has had very profound consequences not just for authors and publishers, but for the society as a whole in a great variety of important ways---in education, in reasoning, in general beliefs about what is valuable and why, etc.
And, Laura's comments reminded me of an after-thought I had; it occurred to me to mention that one of the really difficult consequences of our times comes from the mediocrity-creep which is now apparently well installed even in important publishing houses. What that means in effect is that a major publisher's acceptance of a manuscript is no longer as sound an indication of its quality as once was fairly often the case. I don't mean that big important houses never published mediocre stuff from time to time. Of course they did. The point is rather that, just as popular standards have perhaps always done, what once wouldn't have passed muster other than as a real fluke, is readily deemed quite "salable" on today's market. And rather than rejecting it, the publishers (who really need to sell everything they can because the reading market for commercial paperbacks and hardcovers has shrunk so) think, "Yes, we can sell this," rather than, "Yes, this is good."
I can hear some say, "What!? You mean now I have to be even tougher on my work's quality than the publishing house editor or its reader/critic? I have to question their acceptance of it as being possibly more a matter of the salability than the actual quality? What the...!?!"
But, well, what can I say? If you look not only at what's published today but, moreover, what is really selling remarkably well, the simple fact is that publishers aren't and can't be expected to be immune to temptations to publish what they're perhaps right to think will sell very well regardless of its literary quality. Sixty or seventy years ago and more, this wasn't anything like the problem it is today and the reason is simple and obvious: the tastes of the reading public are nothing like what they were fifty, or sixty and seventy years ago.
That has to be understood though in its context. Were there writers of the calibre of, say, Stephanie Meyers being published fifty to seventy years ago? In a relative sense, you could argue that, yes, there were such: in that then, as now, there were some works published which were the rough --very loosely speaking--equivalents for their time, as far as relative quality is concerned, to a series such as "Twilight". And , in their popularity, as a proportion of the whole reading public, those works and their authors may also have enjoyed rather large audiences--thus, they were real money-makers for the publisher. The difference, however, is that there was also another very large and very important readership whose tastes were much more demanding and discriminating then. Today, the relative size of that same discriminating reading population has shrunk dramatically and this has had very profound consequences not just for authors and publishers, but for the society as a whole in a great variety of important ways---in education, in reasoning, in general beliefs about what is valuable and why, etc.
18proximity1
> 9:
"I think you're on the edge... if only I could take my finger and touch you, I think you'd tip and you'll fly just fine..."
I appreciate that. Personally, I can attest to a definite feeling that I have "moved", have gained, from the concerted efforts I've made over the last eight or nine years, and that in some important ways most of the elements I've needed and have lacked have been found or formed to a great extent. I also feel that in the process I've become a very different person altogether and that much about my views has changed in very important ways. This concerns much about literature, criticism and writing, but it also extends beyond those areas.
There may, I suspect, still be some rather essential elements that simply haven't "clicked" yet. If and when that happens, I don't know, but I have some sense that I'll recognize it and that it will resemble very much what you've described so marvelously when you wrote, "It was weird like I was going through a second adolescence, I thought I was going mad, when actually, it was just the creative flood gates opening and all of this stuff in my head wanted out at the same time."
That resonated with me. I certainly can't at this point say that the "flood-gates" have opened. On the other hand, I do have a definite sense--which has grown more in the past year--- of 'the ground trembling' (as though) with some subterranean forces which are relatively near(er) to bursting forth. ;^)
P.S.: as to your hunch that I may "get" certain things about your own manner and ways, yes, I think there, too, you're correct. Your explanations concerning the choice not to publish via a regular established house, I can easily see your points in it and in---but much else besides-- them, you distinguish yourself from the writer who takes the route of self-publication mostly out of necessity than of choice and standards of taste.
"I think you're on the edge... if only I could take my finger and touch you, I think you'd tip and you'll fly just fine..."
I appreciate that. Personally, I can attest to a definite feeling that I have "moved", have gained, from the concerted efforts I've made over the last eight or nine years, and that in some important ways most of the elements I've needed and have lacked have been found or formed to a great extent. I also feel that in the process I've become a very different person altogether and that much about my views has changed in very important ways. This concerns much about literature, criticism and writing, but it also extends beyond those areas.
There may, I suspect, still be some rather essential elements that simply haven't "clicked" yet. If and when that happens, I don't know, but I have some sense that I'll recognize it and that it will resemble very much what you've described so marvelously when you wrote, "It was weird like I was going through a second adolescence, I thought I was going mad, when actually, it was just the creative flood gates opening and all of this stuff in my head wanted out at the same time."
That resonated with me. I certainly can't at this point say that the "flood-gates" have opened. On the other hand, I do have a definite sense--which has grown more in the past year--- of 'the ground trembling' (as though) with some subterranean forces which are relatively near(er) to bursting forth. ;^)
P.S.: as to your hunch that I may "get" certain things about your own manner and ways, yes, I think there, too, you're correct. Your explanations concerning the choice not to publish via a regular established house, I can easily see your points in it and in---but much else besides-- them, you distinguish yourself from the writer who takes the route of self-publication mostly out of necessity than of choice and standards of taste.
19proximity1
> 10:
" I have an idea for a novel, I've had it for awhile but I know that I'm not mature enough yet to confront it and that if I wrote it now it wouldn't be as poetic and literary as I'd like it."
well, in that case, really, you could "play" with this idea of yours. You needn't do that with the conscious belief that your efforts constitute anything approaching a manuscript you could submit within a year---but so what?
If you approach it as practice, the way an athelete approaches exercises in the course of training, I can't see anything wrong with taking that novel idea of yours and using it as practice material. Of course it won't be as literary as you'd like it to be eventually. But, as L. has pointed out, you don't, won't and can't get to that without passing "through" the earlier stages.
You might find real interest in taking your ideas, playing with them, that is, writing some preliminary pages and then looking at them and saying, something like, "OK. Now, this isn't really quite right. Why? What's wrong with this? " And then setting out to discover how and where it's defective. All of that in order to eventually make that material into a submission? No, simply for the 'fun' and practice of it, for the 'play' and the value which comes from recognizing upon review what is defective in the material or its organization. By the way, the idea, in its essence, whatever it may be, might be entirely fit and good for eventual use in your work(s). It might also go into that work in a manner and a form which you don't even imagine at this point. You know?
20GaryBabb
Veta,
I completely agree with # 19. If you have an idea, pursue it. Write that book! Write it for the joy of it. Write it for the practice. You will learn from it, and the best benefit is that you would have a basic story line that you can always go back and rework later in life. Write it for the YA readers. You say you are young and inexperienced, but this could be to your advantage. You will never again be at this stage of your life. You may just have a perspective others of your age and experience can relate to.
I completely agree with # 19. If you have an idea, pursue it. Write that book! Write it for the joy of it. Write it for the practice. You will learn from it, and the best benefit is that you would have a basic story line that you can always go back and rework later in life. Write it for the YA readers. You say you are young and inexperienced, but this could be to your advantage. You will never again be at this stage of your life. You may just have a perspective others of your age and experience can relate to.
21GaryBabb
Veta,
Going back to your original request: (I could use advice from writers on how to fully form ideas that could be implemented in novels.) The best way to address this is by example. My writing buddy is a small, white dog. Due to his antics I made him a support character and injected some of his antics into the story line. Here is one such short scene:
As Moon, Bambi, and Mama entered the conference room, Amy bristled with excitement. She found a better way to demonstrate the image of an Earth Dragon. Instead of her normal holographic image at the head of the room, the image of a full-size Earth Dragon burst into view, filling the front of the room. The animated dragon appeared and moved lifelike, as it would be genetically engineered to move. It roared and partially spread its wings as far as the space would have allowed a living dragon. She had planned the display in great detail for effect, and it worked.
The group cowered and pulled back in shock, but Oggg’s reaction surprised everyone. The tiny dog had been on the floor at Moon’s feet when the dragon burst in. It shot toward the image, growling and barking, and leaped into the projected image, disrupting the display. It plowed right through, startling the pup when it felt no resistance. It suddenly seemed to realize what it was doing and yelped, trying to turn. Its churning feet slipped and clawed at the slick floor until it finally got some traction, speeding him toward Moon, his protector. Still yelping, it leaped toward Moon’s chest. Fortunately, Moon caught him, but it continued to claw up his arms and chest until it finally reached safety behind Moon’s head. Brave now, Oggg peered around Moon’s head at the restored dragon and barked.
It was the funniest thing Amy had ever seen. She burst out in laughter, but she was not alone. ...
Going back to your original request: (I could use advice from writers on how to fully form ideas that could be implemented in novels.) The best way to address this is by example. My writing buddy is a small, white dog. Due to his antics I made him a support character and injected some of his antics into the story line. Here is one such short scene:
As Moon, Bambi, and Mama entered the conference room, Amy bristled with excitement. She found a better way to demonstrate the image of an Earth Dragon. Instead of her normal holographic image at the head of the room, the image of a full-size Earth Dragon burst into view, filling the front of the room. The animated dragon appeared and moved lifelike, as it would be genetically engineered to move. It roared and partially spread its wings as far as the space would have allowed a living dragon. She had planned the display in great detail for effect, and it worked.
The group cowered and pulled back in shock, but Oggg’s reaction surprised everyone. The tiny dog had been on the floor at Moon’s feet when the dragon burst in. It shot toward the image, growling and barking, and leaped into the projected image, disrupting the display. It plowed right through, startling the pup when it felt no resistance. It suddenly seemed to realize what it was doing and yelped, trying to turn. Its churning feet slipped and clawed at the slick floor until it finally got some traction, speeding him toward Moon, his protector. Still yelping, it leaped toward Moon’s chest. Fortunately, Moon caught him, but it continued to claw up his arms and chest until it finally reached safety behind Moon’s head. Brave now, Oggg peered around Moon’s head at the restored dragon and barked.
It was the funniest thing Amy had ever seen. She burst out in laughter, but she was not alone. ...
22VetaTorres
I feel alot more at ease thank you to everyone for sharing their ideas and advice. It means alot that each of you have written so much when I asked for help.
I think I was going through a bit of a "blue" period the last few weeks; I believe that tends to happen after a break-up -"Ahh to be young and feel love's sharp sting." Given that episode I wanted to throw myself in to writing and create my own world and to actually complete something which is a novel idea since I start various creative projects that are never finished, lol.
Since my intial plea for help I have writted a few scenes and a few songs. Instead of forcing it I let the ideas come to me and then quickly found paper and pen. After such times I felt... well good. Rereading them they aren't quite what I meant them to be but what of it? with some reworking they could be good and that makes me feel even better.
As far as reading, I just finished Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton, and I'm still reading The Phantom of the Opera and On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
I think I was going through a bit of a "blue" period the last few weeks; I believe that tends to happen after a break-up -"Ahh to be young and feel love's sharp sting." Given that episode I wanted to throw myself in to writing and create my own world and to actually complete something which is a novel idea since I start various creative projects that are never finished, lol.
Since my intial plea for help I have writted a few scenes and a few songs. Instead of forcing it I let the ideas come to me and then quickly found paper and pen. After such times I felt... well good. Rereading them they aren't quite what I meant them to be but what of it? with some reworking they could be good and that makes me feel even better.
As far as reading, I just finished Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton, and I'm still reading The Phantom of the Opera and On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
23angiesargenti
That was awesome advice, Laura. I would add one more thing: it could be she's meant to write short stories. It would be worth exploring.
Angie
Angie
