1. AndrewA

    AndrewA Member

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    Hi from England.

    Discussion in 'New Member Introductions' started by AndrewA, Apr 16, 2016.

    FIrst of all a brief introduction, no prizes for guessing my first name! I live in Southern Hampshire, England, not that far off 50th birthday, how time flies and I hate how old I have become, although life experience is priceless for writing I hear.

    I have finally decided to embark on a journey which has been years in the planning. Putting the perverbial pen to paper in order to tell what I hope will be jolly good stories. Therefore I thought that joining a forum where I can learn a few things would be the best move, so here I am.

    I have always had a superb imagination and showed some promising ability to write when I was school. However the education system did not recognise anything I did as worthwhile. One example was essay writing, writing short stories or other types of descriptive narrative was restricted between four hundred and six hundred words, anything more or less was penalised. I used to be the person who would write page after page, then suddenly realising that I had a 1,500 word count and had not even arrived anywhere near the middle of the story.

    A good idea or story would also count for nothing, especially if it was poorly spelt and contained numerous errors with grammar. Many people who obtained outstanding marks had the most dullest and sleep inducing pieces of work imaginable. Yet my imagination was shot down in flames with fails and F grades, or worse.

    It wasn't until I was in my final year I had a teacher for couple of terms, who saw what I had, one day she pulled me out of class at end of lesson and took me aside, she pointed out that although she had to mark my work down for all the previously mentioned reasons, she infact loved reading my stories, even the work I submitted that was 3000+ words she read it all, something she said she never really did. She also told me that most successful authors were not very good at spelling or grammar, the secret was finding a good editor!

    I was encourage by this for a short time, but alas nothing really came of it. Over the decades I have thought often about writing, but never got around to it until now. One thing has inspired me to finally write, a certain computer game called No Mans Sky, for which I have numerous short stories that are an accumulation of decades of thoughts and ideas.

    So here I am and I hope I can learn a few things and share some of my ideas and work so far.
     
    Oscar Leigh likes this.
  2. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Don't use your real name. It's against the guidelines for a reason.
    Welcome! I hope you achieve some kind of writing dreams! Though, I would advise it is better as a fun hobby that might make a bit of money maybe. Just as many painters do painting as a hobby. But you never know I suppose.
    See you around!
     
  3. AndrewA

    AndrewA Member

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    Ho hum Good start. I am not looking to make money, I doubt anyone will buy anything I write anyway.
     
  4. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    That's not really the mentality I'm encouraging. I'm just saying it's unreliable. It doesn't mean it's going to be shitty for you.
     
  5. AndrewA

    AndrewA Member

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    I know, but do I now have to change my username?
     

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