Hello there! My name is Bryan, and I am a pretty new addition to your seemingly-lovely forum. I did a little looking around before making this post, but I figured it'd be a good time to introduce myself. I actually just finished the first draft of a manuscript yesterday, so I'm pretty excited about that. Feeling good about that is probably what gave me the strength, I think, to make this post. I predominantly write YA fiction; the novel I finished yesterday was a historical MxM romance (I identify as a queer writer), and I also co-wrote an urban fantasy novel with one of my friends that we've put on the back-burner for now. I'm honestly not the very best with forums (I usually feel like I'm drowning when trying to keep up participation and often times find they can be cliquish at times - understandably based on how some members have known each other for decades), but this one seems pretty friendly and welcoming as far as I can see. If any of you have any tips about forum use, I'd love to hear. Beyond that, I've been struggling a bit trying to find a community/writer friends (as perhaps some of you in this difficult year have too). I've played around with various interest sites like Meetup as well as the NaNo site, but my local writing community isn't exactly a thriving one. I've also joined Discord servers, but I don't feel like those work very well beyond using them in very focused ways (I.e: events) - Discords that are always running don't seem too helpful. I'd like to use this website to help me try to maintain my momentum because as proud as I am of myself for sticking to the first draft I just completed, I know that I am never too far from a motivation collapse. Additionally, I'd like to try to learn from others about establishing an online presence, especially on Twitter. It seems like Twitter is quite the author's platform, and on queries in the past, I've found that a lot of those forms ask for Twitter handles. And I will 100% get into the query and cover letter critique corner. I'd also love to critique some sample work as well. All that's to say that I'm happy to be here. I hope to meet and talk (message) a great many of you!
Welcome to the forums Bryan. Glad you have finished your first draft and I hope you continue to enjoy your writing. In terms of the basics, you may want to take a look at the forum rules but you will probably be ok otherwise. Don't worry about forums too much- a good rule of thumb is as long as you are having fun and using the time on them productively, you're doing really well.
