From the first page

My awful reading habits: I devour books. I'm a speed reader by nature. Even when I try to slow down I end up racing to the epilogue. I don't care much for detail or conversation. I just have to know how it ends. I need my story fix. My process: 1. Read it fast, read it now. 2. Anyone who distracts me is risking life and limb. As a teen I was serious skilled at two things. While I read I could hold conversations. (The second is that I could sleep with my eyes open. It was great for boring classes.) I can't do either any more. Sigh. 3.Skip the boring bits. Not this kind of skipping. (Source) I was an author's nightmare incarnate. I disregarded whole paragraphs (and sometimes chapters when I was very naughty) that they spent hours or days or months or years writing. And I didn't care. The worst part? I still do it. I try not to. But I have limited free time and I don't want to know about the colour of the sun in exact details as it climbs over the o...

I have a voice in my head that's sole purpose is remind me of all those doubts and how things could go wrong. I call it the anti-me. The anti-me is jealous when I want to be happy for other, mean when I want to be nice and rains over my parade even after I accomplish something to be proud of. This same voice ignores rationality so it's not my sub-conscious being cautious. It told me that a coat in the dark was a face, that the wind was something howling for my five-year-old blood. It seems to thrive on making me hate myself and everything I write. If I could shut it up by punching my face, I'd take the black eye. I know better now. Most of the time I don't even register the little nag whining away. The exception seems to be when writing first lines. That's why it'll be the last thing I do with this one. (Even though I am writing down 'maybe' first lines) Are the times when the anti-you gets too loud to ignore?

That word sends shivers down your spine, doesn't it? When you're looking at 20,000+ words, the task of editing can seem really daunting. Well, don't worry because it's supposed to feel that way. There will be things you want to change. There will be grammar and spelling errors. There will be rewrites. There will be plot holes. There will be scenes you love that need to go. There will be characters  you love that need to be cut. There will be paragraphs that make you wonder how sober you were when you wrote them. -_- This will all happen no matter how long you spent planning and plotting and detailing. Some seemingly glaring mistakes will only show up after you've spent months writing the whole damn thing. You will hate your book as much as you love it as this point. It won't take away your pride in finishing, but it will certainly diminish it. The first draft will suck. Well, it will suck when you compare it to the second draft. Which will suck when...

When writing news articles, we use something called the inverted pyramid. This means putting the most important fact first. It's hard for two reasons. The first is that it goes against your nature. Every story you see, hear or tell has a start, a middle and a end. Usually in that order. It's the best way to explain a series or events. However with news it's different. People don't care how or why an event happened. It's the event itself that is important. What happened? Why? Sometimes only a line or two of the whole thing will be read and that has to be enough. The other thing is the importance of a fact is subjective. The fact as I see as the most important might seem trivial or obvious to you. The one you choose to focus on is the angle of the story. You aren't changing the facts, you're just putting in your choice of importance. It might be an idea, after you've plotted out your story, to do this with your key scenes. What's the most im...

I write before I type. Then I go to the excellent  other side of the story  to help me with tricky editing and spiteful words that slow down everything. So saying that I have one chapter all the way written (I know, I'll need to re-write it) and another one written out in pen is a very good thing. If anyone sees this, which I doubt as I'm new and shiny; how do you write?

I know how I want my story to start and, even more importantly, I know exactly how I want my story to end. If I start at the beginning there's a danger that I'll trail off or even forget the ending I have in mind. That's why I've decided to work backwards. Progress: Good. Got a chapter written down yesterday. Today I'll type it, fix any annoying POV errors and edit it a bit so it less rough. Well, that's the plan anyway. Wish me luck!

Hello! I suppose I should get about telling you what this blog is all about. You see, fair folk of the internet, I have an idea and I'm going to write it. I'm going to write every day (hopefully) until it's done. Then I'll edit it and risk the big bad publication world. I don't know whether it'll be self-published or if I'll go down an more traditional route. I don't even know if it's going to be any good. What I do know know is that I'm going to keep track of my progress here. Starting from that very scary, very blank first page. Here we go. Wish me luck!