Writen a novel? / Creative Writing Courses

[zoooo]

Like Zorro.

Teehee.

 

[MightyAphrodite]

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

have a go at this in November, it's a lotta fun, but you do get a little obsessive about wordcounts

ive still not edited from that ......

liam told me during one of our uncomfortable phone conversations this past week ( :-D ) that i got a tshirt in the post from them for this.....

http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/

theyre all the same lot


anyway, im gonna donate the tshirt to redsnapper so he doesnt have to make a tshirt i think

but, script frenzy?......yeah alright.

 

[Azrael]

I really respect authors who spend about a year researching their subject and then actually write the book. I dunno if I could ever be arsed. I just start from a random place and let the story take me where it wants to.

I started on the fly, then stopped a few chapters in and glanced over some books. I knew pretty quick that it wasn't going to be published, but it was useful practise for the remote day that I do manage to submit something to a publisher.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Believe me, since I read 'Relentless', I know that my book ought to theoretically be good enough. I do think a big part of it is luck.

Some of what gets published is nothing that special. But then, if it's trashy, it has to be flowing, well-plotted and engaging in a different kind of way.

 

[Stoat Boy]

Well I have long gone past the point of caring what others think so with this latest literary master piece of mine (post-apocalyptic schlep across a plague devastated Europe and all that jazz) its going to be a case of published and be dammed, even if I have to get the thing printed myself.

I have enjoyed writing it, the feedback from my target audience has been good so far and I want to be able to look up on my bookshelf and see my name up there.

If it sells then smashing, if it don't well c'est la vie and I will just crack on with the next one.

The one thing that strikes me that would be writers have in common is this notion that what they have written is ‘rubbish’. I don’t get that. If you have made the effort of putting it together, taken the time to go through a couple of drafts of it and enjoyed doing it then just put it out there for the world to see.

I don’t recollect anybody expressing a wish that they had not written a book on their death beds.

 

[Diamond]

1. Am in the process of doing so this year. Researched over last summer. First draft done in the autumn up until just after Xmas. Re-reading and critiquing for 6 weeks following NY. Then broke the wrist on my dominant hand which has sort of scuppered my rewriting for a bit. Getting back up to speed now. Cast off tomorrow and intending to launch straight back into the 2nd draft.

2. I didn't go on a creative writing course but I did spend a while reading and taking notes from a number of basic guides and how-to books which were recommended to me by someone I know who has written a few novels and teaches a course at the city lit. They were immensely useful too. The kind of crap you think you can get away with when you're coming to it blind is unbelievable. And then when you read it back you just can't work out why it's so cliched/dull/slow/unconvincing. Those books help you to identify the specific great mistakes that everyone tends to make at first instance yet fail to recognise.

 

[Azrael]

2. I didn't go on a creative writing course but I did spend a while reading and taking notes from a number of basic guides and how-to books which were recommended to me by someone I know who has written a few novels and teaches a course at the city lit. They were immensely useful too.

Got any favourites you could share? I read Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces a while back, and very good it was too, but it isn't the best "how to" guide ever written!

 

[editor]

A little off topic, but I was lucky enough t be asked to write a book about web design a few years ago, and it proved a really tough challenge requiring masses of self-discipline - but once it was finished I felt well chuffed!

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

A little off topic, but I was lucky enough t be asked to write a book about web design a few years ago, and it proved a really tough challenge requiring masses of self-discipline - but once it was finished I felt well chuffed!

(Serious questioN) was it a big seller?