blogfest: advice for new writers

today, the black dog is prowling.  i told Twitter about it, and my tweeps instantly set about cheering me up.  or, in one particular case *looks hard at @peevishpenman* bullying me to do something about it.  Carrie's suggestion was to join her blogfest. 
after a little persuasion, i guess i may have one or two things to add, with the caveat that most of the advice probably comes not from me, but from Saint Neil (better known as Neil Gaiman - thoroughly bigged up in this post on how i became a writer and got my name).

1)  write.  just write.  doesn't matter what. emails, blog posts, poems, short stories, scenes, *anything*.  if you haven't been trained, you need the practice.  even if you *have* been trained, it'll keep the writing muscles in your brain nice and limber.

2)  write about stuff you find interesting.  if *you're* not interested, your readers sure as hell won't be.

3)  read. lots.  sounds obvious, i know, but that's how i learned to write.  just by having my nose (literally) in a book from the age of seven or eight.

4)  read different stuff to what you'e used to.  you may not enjoy a lot of it, and that's fine.  but *give it a chance* before you put it down and say "this isn't for me".  you may be surprised.  also, it will give you clues as to what you in particular probably *shouldn't* be writing. (see #2)

5)  ask yourself "what if?" ALL THE TIME.  this is how stories are made.

6)  most importantly (for me, at any rate) find a support network!!!  seriously.  Twitter (where i found mine) has more value to me as a writer than i could possibly, possibly express.  for advice, opening up new genres, and a vast, limitless supply of support, encouragement and Twitterlove, i woldn't call myself a writer if it wasn't for those little 140 character messages, cheering me on from all over the world.
it gives me the warm fuzzies. ^_^

hey, carrie, whadya know?  it seems to be working! *smile*

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thank all the gods! (and the local and Twitter friends, too!)

well, well, dear reader.  if you were on Twitter this afternoon, round about threeish (BST), you may have seen this:

RRRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! AT LAST! AT LAST! AT LAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES! YES, YOU BITCH!!! YOU DIDN'T DEFEAT ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and, shortly after, this:

*************************EPIC HAPPYDANCE**********************************

that was the sound of me finally, FINALLY!!! finishing the typing up of the bloody WIP.  gods, but it's been a slog.  it has taken me approximately 84 days, and an awful lot of tearing my hair out to get this effing thing onto my hard drive.  i think some of the horror was partly due to my not believing in this one as much as the last one.  i realised pretty early on that it was flawed, and i almost re-genre'd the whole thing.  in fact, i rewrote about the first 8,000 words, in an attempt to do this.  that didn't work, either.  the problem was always with the beginning.  in fact, this weekend, i wrote up the most troublesome section (about 8-ish thousand words) using the simple expedient of just ignoring large parts of the original text.  there was actually a lot of rambling and place-marching in the first 10 or 15 thousand words, which was a big part of the problem.  so i just took a big machete and hacked at it until i could bear to type it.  it seemed to work

so, now, i have a big lump of story that needs to be carved into something readable.

this is gonna be interesting.

and, before i go, thankyouthankyouthankyou with big, massive GINORMOUS happyhugs to all of my local and Twitter friends who have kept me sane and encouraged me and distracted me from the horror of the typing.

love you guys! XXX

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