Aspiring Novelists

While visiting Nathan Bransford's blog, I ran across a post where he asked, "How writer's came up with the idea for their current work in progress (WIP)?"  After giving this question some thought, I decided the answer was pretty straight forward.  There was no "Eureka" moment.  After years of brainstorming I thought of a way to weave a couple of ideas into a story. Although I give Bransford credit for asking an intriguing question, I think one that may be more interesting is, What inspired authors to write in the first place?  I'm pretty sure the majority of us aspiring novelists were influenced by  fascinating people, or experienced some sort of life changing event.  In my case, I was exposed to the world of writing early in life.  From as far back as I can remember, my mother always wrote.  There was hardly a  morning that I didn't wake to the rap...

Hello All, I   hope life is treating you well.  No complaints here.  Most of my time has been spent plugging away at my novel.  So far I've written 4000 words this week.  A welcome change from last month when I found myself suffering through a bout of writer's block.   I'm not sure if you've experienced this phonemona, but it is excruciating. Many a day my computer sat accusingly on my desk while I played with my new iphone, chatted on Litopia, excercised, and floated from one writing blog to the next.  When I did muster the courage to actually write a sentence, I found myself pressing the delete key as soon as the words flashed across the screen. Finally I sat down and asked "Where do I want this chapter to go?"  Short and long of it... I'd plotted myself into a corner and I did not know how to get out.   All roads led t...

Hello everyone, I hope the New Year is treating you well. I'm still pecking away at my novel and to date, I have written 62,000 words, only 25,000 more to go (: Then, onto the editing portion of my journey...Sigh. Now that I’m so close to the end of my novel, I sent out some feelers for beta readers. Much to my chagrin, I realized that finding a person close to me who could provide objective, helpful feedback would be difficult. Friends care about my feelings, so it is unlikely their comments will be honest or objective. Family members love me, and well, they also have to live with me so I scratched them off the list. Then, last month I came across a website called Litopia Writer's Colony (www.litopia.com) . Established by a literary agent in the U.K. named Peter Cox, the site is designed to bring likeminded readers and writers together in a venue that is helpful and supportive. Most importantly, membership is free. That’s right FREE. Since I’ve only been a member for a mo...