Writer…

Well I came across this competition on the webook site – Page to Fame. The basics of it are…

“Popular books go through four rounds—after the first page, writers submit the first chapter, then 50 pages, then the complete manuscript. Each time a book gets elevated to the next round, a participating literary agent reviews the work. Your ratings let literary agents and publishers know what real readers want to see on the shelves—and your favorite pages could become the best-sellers of tomorrow!

At each stage, the submissions will be reviewed by litery agents.”

Sounds like a good way to get some non-biased feedback, so I have had a go and submitted the first page of “Harvester”, the book idea I’m working on.

The idea is nowhere near ready yet, let alone any writing I have done, so I am not submitting this with a hope of getting to the next round, but I am keen to receive feedback and to learn to cope with feedback in a positive way. After all, it’s hard to take any form of criticism for something you have put so much work into.

So hopefully this will be an exercise to help me grow as a writer.

Readers so far – 18    Submissions to the next round – 23%

Well when I started this blog, I commented on the character that was haunting me and wouldn’t allow me to write.

I had first devised the idea of the character 2 years ago, but have never been able to finish her story, in any format and for the last two years, I have been incredibly unproductive.

It has just come to me, I am now writing, but that writing doesn’t involve Helen, the haunting character. I just seem to be writing and hadn’t even realised she had left me alone.

So is this a sign?

Is this the story I am meant to be writing?

Let’s hope so.  Let’s hope Sam can carry on and be herself and tell her own story, and then hopefully Helen’s will come as easily and we can free her.

I’m slowly eaking the story out of the deepest, darkest corners of my mind.

It’s starting to take shape and I’m finding that the plotting and structuring I resented so much to begin with is now actually helping me piece things together.

I’m working with 3 main characters; the lead, the romantic opposite and the opposition to the lead. I’m also working with each of these characters having their own subplot which ties in around the books main plot.

It’s slow, but I feel like it’s worth it, things are slowly taking shape and becoming less blurry round the edges.

Who knows, maybe one day we will see this novel on a book shelf.

I’ve found that researching on how to plot and plan has really helped.

Information coming from all different places has helped me see many different view points on this and allowed me to pick and choose to create a method which seems to be working for me.

I keep getting little visions of a scene…. so I write it down, record the actions and reactions of that scene, the emotions and dialogue and then store it away until I can place it together.

Being such a computer geek, I am finding the manual working on this to be the hardest thing. If I could do all this on a computer it would make thing so much faster, but I haven’t seen a computer programme out there which does what I want yet. :0(

There is no one for all, simple tool to make you a great writer. There is however lots of advice available on the web which you might find useful and inspiring.

I thought I’d post a few of the useful sites and tools I’ve found online when I’ve needed help. Hopefully they will help inspire someone else.

Short Story Writing

The best piece of advice I found, was about writing a short story and the author has managed to condense everything you will have been told and heard into a couple of lines…

• Put a man up a tree…
• Throw rocks at him…
• Get him down!

As I said, very simple, but straight to the point.

Basically

1. Put your character in a situation
2. Make it worse
3. Get them out of the situation

It really is as simple as that. How good your story comes down to your idea and your writing ability.

You can read more about this approach at  write101 .

Writing A Novel

I found this website and thought it was worth a mention as an inspiration for potential novelists.

It has a list of useful tools which you may find useful to help you keep organised as well as some advice and positive inspiration.

Useful Tools

The BBC

Don’t forget places like the BBC website which always has some great online learning .

How to write a novel.

This is fun. Very simple guidance on the basics of getting started with your character, structure etc.

Well there has been progress at least on her story.

I was originally writing Helen as a writer who was suffering from writers’ block with the burgeoning romance being her “cure”. An archetypal romance, however the romance I have read is very, very different from the “Mills & Boon” type romance stories around and I just couldn’t comfortably write in that style.

Since then, the story moved on… Helen was still a writer, but had completed her first novel and was in the process of edits.
She meets someone and falls in love, but through the book, the love interest falls away. Helen had to find a way to repair the damage the book had done.

Again, however things have moved on, I’m now toying with a slightly more paranormal style approach – very different to what I have done before, but I have to be honest. This one feels better.

I’ll keep you up to date.

So many times you hear writers talk about that story that just won’t let them be. The story that must be told, and that’s their inspiration for writing that novel.

Well I have something similar, not a story which is haunting me, but a character and no matter what I do, I just can’t get rid of her. I’ve tried short stories, but I can’t seem to write anything that isn’t her story.

The problem is,  I’m not finished creating her story yet.

So I’m writing a blog in the hope that it will help me to excorcise Helen and finally get her story written and her ghost freed.

I’ll update this blog at various times with anything I find useful to me or which might be to others. I’ll also talk alittle about what I’m going through with writing.

I guess really I’m just wanting to talk…