New Max

Hello, I’m really excited about joining the forum!

I am a bit out of touch with my creative side, but I love the creative act of writing and am looking forward to starting up again. I have a few characters that are looking for their plot and I am determined to start/finish my novel within the next year. I'm not sure what genre it will be yet.

It's going to be a couple of months before I can shift my focus fully to novel writing but will definitely join in with NaNoWriMo . I'm pretty good at giving editing suggestions too, so hopefully I can help other writers before I can fully indulge in my own work.

I love the look of the site by the way.

Looking forward to the writing adventure!
Max

Welcome Max, it's great to have you aboard!

Writing is a wonderful passtime, whether you want to get published or you just write for your own enjoyment!

If you haven't already (since I haven't checked the rest of the forum), you'll have to let us know who your characters are and what type of scene you see them in.

Have you written anything before this? If so, what was it's genre, how long was it?

Greetings and welcome to the board

Hi, thanks for the greetings!

In answer to your questions:
I used to write a lot and had always designated my future career as ‘author’ but then I joined a creative writing class and had my confidence completely knocked by people who were, on reflection, only more confident than me, but not necessarily better writers. It wasn’t intentional on their part I’m sure, but I felt a bit inadequate because I wasn’t as eloquent as them when talking about my writing. I swore that I would never write creatively again, that lasted about three years. This is a promise I don’t mind breaking!

What did I write? Well at bit of everything really, I have turned my hand to poetry though not any more. I co-wrote and directed a play a couple of years ago. I guess you could call it a gothic thriller. I liked writing short stories, and now that I look at them the best ones were mostly of the fantasy genre. My ultimate aim is to write a novel, even if I only have one copy for myself!

I will have to have a think how to describe my characters, although they are well formed in my head. I will start describing them in the character thread.

Nanowrimo will definitely help you to get that novel written... Even better, the last few years one of the self publishers has offered a killer deal!

If you win Nanowrimo (fully confirm your entire novel online -- don't worry, they don't save it, they just check for word count), one of your prizes has been the ability to send your novel away to this self-publishers, and they will publish a single copy of your novel for free for you... Although from what I understand, they have very good prices on extra copies as well if you interested.

And that is the problem with many Creative groups. Never let your confidence waver because they'll descend upon you like a pack of ravenous dogs.

Hopefully, we'll give you more confidence and support then you've gotten before! Writing is easy... It's only writing consistantly that's hard.

That's a very good simile for creative writing groups

I've just posted on the other thread and I wanted to say that you are very good at pinpointing what needs to be lifted from people's ideas. Are you involved in a creative writing group (that isn't online I mean)? If you are not, you should run one, you give very good advice!

I am right at the beginning of the writing process, lots of messy ideas, but there's a novel in there somewhere. Thanks for your support and advice, hopefully I can reciprocate too. Well, if anyone wants any academic essays looked over I'm a good editor..?

Thank you Max. Actually, I'm not currently running a live writing group. although I have been thinking about it for a while now.

While I would like to run one, most of my friends aren't writers. I'm thinking about creating one this Nano, after I've met more writers and spoken to them.

Actually, I was thinking that if I get enough people on this board, who want a more "live" writing experience, starting a Chat room, open certain days and times each month. That way we could actually have word wars, ask live questions about our works, and say exactly what's been on our minds lately. I think having writing based challenges in a live environment like that really helpful, even if you're consistently not the fastest writer (Heck, I never was when I did it with our Nano group).

I'd have to get more people on the site and willing to sign up for it though... Man, getting people to come to the site is hard since I really only have word of mouth to rely on. All of my friends to a one said "Oh, a writing forum? That sounds great! I know 4 or 5 people who would love that!", and then they either don't sign on, or don't tell their friends... Sigh. But I am working on it!

The live writing experience sounds really good. I think it would work in an online environment too, it may be even less threatening than a live writing group.

I've got some good news to share. My friend emailed me today and said that the play we wrote together, that I mentioned in my first post, is going to be performed by a teenage drama group in my home town. I was proud that it got to stage anyway but it's nice to have it affirmed that someone else thinks it's good enough to use again. Wow a truly smiley moment I haven't had in ages

I'm back from a summer of vast quantities of studying and work! Sorry for being absent in body and mind. Am fully engaged and ready to rock the writing.

Don't worry.

I personally can't write creatively during summer. Now of course, I want to start and this waiting is killing me.

I've ordered a dictation program, and I think it may have arrived on Friday, but I wasn't here to recieve it (or at least, I recieved something, and I'm pretty sure it's from them).

I'll let everybody know once I've given it a go.

It'll be great to see you back on here Max.

I'm going to be having an awesome Nanowrimo contest, and putting up a heck of a lot of links soon to other writerly websites.

Just as soon as my hand is somewhat better.

Hi guys, just wanted to post that after not having internet or a working computer for a VERY long time, and after having a few big life changes, I am back online and back on the forum! Looking forward to starting up the writing again How is everyone?

Woot! It's great to see you here again! I finished my novel! It's 101,178 words long! I'm currently working on editing and putting it through my critique group.

Have you been writing?

I set up a creative writing group for the children I work with, so I've been focusing on them rather than myself. They are wonderful.

I have just started working on my novel again after a break of about a year. Kitsune - 101,178 words - that's huge! Well done for finishing. my novel stands at about 20,000 words and probably won't get much bigger as I'm a fierce editor. It's more of a novelette I guess.

I'm letting my partner read it. He likes it so far.

Are you going to publish your work?

I'm hoping to publish my work, but first I have to get through editing. I'm going to be taking it to us SIWC with me to show to one of the publishers from edge publishing. There's always the hope that he will ask to see a full. It's really not that long ago, maybe 200 pages, perhaps 250 (once you account for the fact that I have usually 500 words per page and most books have 350). The average length, at least for a new author. Don't worry I'll definitely be keeping you updated!