Author Topic: Author In Progress  (Read 194299 times)

Offline doseyclwn

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #585 on: July 21, 2014, 01:14:41 AM »
Hey there,


    I'm an aspiring writer myself. I've been writing on and off, just little short stuff for about 25 years or so. I became a single father in 2006 and got laid off in. I'll be honest, my first thought was "Hey, if JK Rowling can do it...". I quickly found out why everyone didn't do it. I kept at it, completing my first Nanowrimo novel that year. Needless to say, it sucked so bad I almost beat myself up for having written it. But, I kept at it. I do Nano every year, and I've always won (except for last year when I had a stroke on thanksgiving). I've completed four novels now. Two of them are still sitting untouched and unread. One has been through about 8 drafts and is with a beta reader now. I'm going through the other one now, a dark Urban Fantasy. I really like this one. My protagonist is a guy who has no magic (that he knows about yet), but he has two really cool things about him; 1) He can't be affected by magic at all. Whether it's cast by Butters or God, it can't touch him, and nobody knows why (yet). And 2) He can use his third eye, but only when he has alcohol in his system. Problem is, he's an alcoholic. I have a seven book series planned for him, so we'll see how that goes.

     In any case, that's me so far...

Offline meg_evonne

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #586 on: July 21, 2014, 03:45:44 AM »
Welcome! You've set yourself a wonderful journey! And as Chaucer tells the story the more on pilgrimage the better!
"Calypso was offerin' Odysseus immortality, darlin'. Penelope offered him endurin' love. I myself just wanted some company." John Henry (Doc) Holliday from "Doc" by Mary Dorla Russell
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Offline BlackM00nKyuzo

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #587 on: September 17, 2014, 03:22:23 PM »
Hello everyone, name's C.W. i'M 26 and I've writing since I could pick up a pencil, I've been working on this cyberpunk fantasy for many years now. I'm trying to finish up the first story and get it published in the near future, but working takes so much time from me, but it's my ultimatum goal to do this. I love to read for others who are trying to make it out just like myself. But I've also had other ideas for other stories I would like to work on in the future, but need to get through that first hurdle before I jump the gun. The cyberpunk story I'm working on is in a dark future filled with inspiring anti-heroes but villains that you can relate to and understand and reason with. Anyway it's great to meet with you all and chat. I wish you all luck and hard work on our endeavors to become great authors, thanks.

 

Offline LizW65

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #588 on: October 14, 2014, 12:05:07 AM »
I've updated my website to include a couple of excerpts from Body For Hire:
http://elizabethkwadsworth.com/Read_Excerpt.html
Enjoy!
"Make good art." -Neil Gaiman
"Or failing that, entertaining trash." -Me
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Offline meg_evonne

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #589 on: October 28, 2014, 02:14:32 AM »
I've updated my website to include a couple of excerpts from Body For Hire:
http://elizabethkwadsworth.com/Read_Excerpt.html
Enjoy!
. Nice Liz! Also enjoyed meandering around your webpage.
"Calypso was offerin' Odysseus immortality, darlin'. Penelope offered him endurin' love. I myself just wanted some company." John Henry (Doc) Holliday from "Doc" by Mary Dorla Russell
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Offline Farmerbob1

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #590 on: December 14, 2014, 04:33:47 PM »
**Wall of Text Warning**

Well, I suppose I'm an author in progress.

A little more than a year ago, I was wandering through the Space Battles forum and saw a discussion about Endbringers vs. Mab, and I was curious.  So I looked up this online blogfiction called "Worm" by a fellow named Wildbow.  A million or so words later (literally), after I got caught up with the story, I started watching it for the twice a week updates.  I started participating in the fanbase discussions in the comments.

Seeing what Wildbow was doing, serial fiction, a couple times a week, made me realize that it looked like an ideal way for ME to practice writing.  I could get feedback from people on a daily basis.  I could watch page stats and see what people seemed to like.  It had been around 25 years since my last English class though, so I knew I would be terribly rusty.  At the same time, I had been told by lots of people in the long distant past that I was pretty good at writing interesting short fiction.  So I wrote my first serial fiction.  A fanfiction based in Wildbow's world of Worm, but with my own original characters.  Even now, it's pretty terrible grammatically.  I stopped updating it and making fixes after I started doing my own original writing.  On days when I think that my writing just sucks though, I can look at this link and realize what around 700k words written have done for me.  https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9523770/1/Arc

So after I finished Arc, I started my own original science fiction, one chapter at a time in a blog, like Wildbow.  I had already blown off a bunch of rust from my writing skills with Arc, but had no clue how much more improvement I could expect from myself.  I wrote somewhere around 500,000 words in Symbiote, over four "books" in a few months time.  I learned so much.  I also learned that I had a whole lot more to learn.  A bunch of people started following me, offering me feedback and pointing out my grammar errors, I also got some commentary about the actual meat of the writing.  It was all tremendously valuable.  Wordpress allows you to look at old revisions of pages, and I can tell you that the first few pages of Symbiote, as originally written, were terrible, horrible, awful.  More terrible to me now than the first chapter of Arc felt when I started working on Symbiote, which can be found here.  https://farmerbob1.wordpress.com/about/

Eventually though, I felt like I needed to move to a new project.  I had isolated some of my own writing faults and wanted a new universe to write in to try to isolate and address those faults.  I also wanted to write superpowered fiction.  So I started writing another original work, Reject Hero.  Reject hero is only one book, but it's a fairly lengthy one, at somewhere around 200k+ words.  Again, it is a chapter-based web blog.  http://rejecthero.wordpress.com/about/

Again, I learned a lot.  When I read some of what I think to be the best-written chapters in Reject Hero, I know full well that I've bought books that were written by less talented writers.  Not that I'm claiming to be GOOD, mind you, but I'm claiming to be better than at least some people who have managed to get themselves published.

One of the great things about blog fiction is that you get immediate feedback, after you have a established base.  I cannot stress enough how much that made a difference to me.  I have thick skin though.  Some people won't be able to deal with it, especially for their own original fiction.  Having some random person offer random criticism  can hurt.  A couple people have done so with big enough pointy sticks to hurt me, and I'm the guy that writes a chapter, and then drops the first draft onto the internet for followers to read.  Literally.  I typically at least do a quick read-through, but what hits the blog for my readers first is a first draft.  I have discovered that it helps me be a little more careful about what and how I write. (I do continue to update and correct when problems are brought to my attention.  The first post is sometimes significantly different than the final version, after I've poked at it a few times.)

My biggest weakness, however, is that I am a 'gardener' style writer.  However I have started to think that this might only be the case because I've been too lazy to actually write a framework for a book, and then fill in the chapters with *shudder* a pre-arranged sequence of events.  So my next two projects are going to involve me trying out this whole "planning" thing before I write, rather than putting butt-in-chair and letting the characters do what they want.

I realize that this whole planning thing is work, so I'm going to start with a small project.  I am now writing a fanfic where I plan to combine characters from two of my favorite original fiction writers.  Jim Butcher, and Wildbow.  I will be introducing Knight of the Cross Butters and his companion Bob to the Thorburn Bogeyman Blake and his companion Evan.  The short story crossover is called Knights of Broken Swords, and it can be found here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10888845/1/Knights-of-Broken-Swords  (When I realized that two of my favorite authors each has characters who wielded broken swords, I simply could not resist using the two of them together in a fanfic.)  Only chapter 1 has been written at this point, but there will probably be a couple chapters a week for a few weeks until I finish the story.

And then I will be starting my third original work, in something that I had someone call a 'stonepunk' world.  I'm going to be trying several new things beyond simple planning in advance.  First, there will be no super powers or hyper-technology.  Everyone will be normal humans.  Second, I'm going to attempt to write it as rational fiction, as described over at /r/rational at Reddit.  Thirdly, I'm going to try to write it as a YA or light novel genre book, which will challenge me to keep my word count down, while keeping my information density high, and the action has to happen regularly.

I've heard people say that the first million words are practice.  I'm nearly done practicing :)
« Last Edit: December 14, 2014, 05:32:54 PM by Farmerbob1 »

Offline meg_evonne

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #591 on: December 15, 2014, 12:35:08 PM »
Welcome farmerbob1. You've going JB's writing blog about technique? Checkout podcasts at writing excuses.com too. Both are invaluable! I've a writer's blog at megevonne.logspot.com as well. Happy writing journey!
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Offline Farmerbob1

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #592 on: December 15, 2014, 04:49:20 PM »
Welcome farmerbob1. You've going JB's writing blog about technique? Checkout podcasts at writing excuses.com too. Both are invaluable! I've a writer's blog at megevonne.logspot.com as well. Happy writing journey!

You mean Jim's LiveJournal entries from years ago?  I've read through them and they are definitely very useful to me, at least I think they will be, when I actually start really planning something.  The first two chapters of my current crossover fanfic thing are pretty much entirely written already in my head.  I think I'm going to force myself to at least sketch out the story and chapter arcs tonight, before writing the second chapter.

Writing excuses?  Heh.  That's one thing I don't need.  I have to be careful to remember to sleep some days.  The only thing that sometimes interferes with my desire to write is my desire to play MMO games, which all get old again after only a couple days.  I used to be addicted to MMO's but it felt empty.  Now I know why, because I wasn't really creating anything there.  My addiction has shifted to writing.  Perhaps not a bad thing.  Well, definitely not a bad thing, but not always a good thing.

I love your fish app on your blog, though I must admit I was confused a bit before I realized that your blog was where you talked about writing in general, not where you did your writing.  Some of the articles had some mighty interesting titles, so I bookmarked you and will be returning to poke around more!

Offline meg_evonne

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #593 on: December 16, 2014, 01:42:31 PM »
no. Writingexcuses.Com is a great place for basic and hard writing. I spent an entire year on villains as a result of the segments on writingexcuses.Com. you'll find it immensely helpful. Go to the old ones. Brandon Sanderson etc.

I've been advised so often here and other places to not post my work online. as a learning experience I think that's great same goes for fanfic. The answer to getting better is just keep writing over and over and over and reading other people's work over and over. after years of writing I've decided that there is no other rule other than the 10000 one. That's a lot of practice writing. Again best wishes. AND I love my fish app!  Did you check out my website? Just uploaded a 'break my heart' endorsement! MEvonneDobson.com to see it.
"Calypso was offerin' Odysseus immortality, darlin'. Penelope offered him endurin' love. I myself just wanted some company." John Henry (Doc) Holliday from "Doc" by Mary Dorla Russell
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Offline The Deposed King

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #594 on: December 17, 2014, 01:49:41 AM »
Good to see you farmerbob1, I went over and read some of your hero with the Soul Well.  Good stuff.  I just don't know that I'd have your dedication though, writing a million words of fanfic?  Stuff I could never put up for sale???

Wow.

But I'd say your writing's fairly good, you aught to put it up for sale on amazon if you haven't done it yet.



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Offline Farmerbob1

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #595 on: December 17, 2014, 12:38:45 PM »
A Million words of Fanfic?  Ohno!

Symbiote and Reject Hero are original works, around 700k between the two.

Arc and Knights of Broken Swords are fanfic.  Arc is less than 50k words.  Knights of Broken Swords will probably be less than 100k.

The next series project has a name though, that I came up with yesterday.  "Set in Stone"
I reserved a Wordpress address for it today, but am not going to begin working on it heavily until the current project is done.

Symbiote is consistently getting large number of hits every day (600+), even though it's been inactive for quite some time.  I plan on rewriting it with a more solid understanding of what will happen.  People like it now, but it's a bit chaotic, and I know there are places where things just don't make sense.

I've never taken a penny for any of my own writing so far.  I have considered it to be practice.  I think I'm to the point now where I could feel comfortable trying to sell E-Books.  If I can show that I can draw readers in an E-book, well, at that point I might consider a paper publisher.

One step at a time, even though I really have no clue where I'm walking.  I figure I'll get there sometime, wherever there is.

Offline Willowhugger

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #596 on: July 10, 2015, 06:56:41 AM »
Well my two books, "The Rules of Supervillainy" and "Esoterrorism" are out. So I must promote them like a whipped dog!

Then it's off to my next project, my HIGH FANTASY NOVEL!

Which, of course, will make me rich and famous.

 ;) ::) :P 8)
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Offline The Deposed King

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #597 on: July 14, 2015, 04:56:21 AM »
The Rules of supervillainy was good I thought but it seemed to expand beyond the original scope.  I mean I was really looking forward to kicking butt and taking names in the city as he made a bid for power and then the story went phenominal cosmic power in an itty bitty living space and all of a sudden even if he could take the city it was small beans and peanuts.

That said I liked the book.




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Offline Paynesgrey

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #598 on: August 02, 2015, 08:13:41 PM »
*Crawls out from under his work in progress.*

Just sold a Shaifennen Roehe story to Abyss & Apex.  It'll appear some time next year.

*crawls back under work in progress.*

Offline Mickey Finn

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Re: Author In Progress
« Reply #599 on: August 03, 2015, 02:37:03 AM »
What he didn't mention was that it got accepted MUCH MUCH quicker than they usually do. He must have wow'd the editors.
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