Good morning/afternoon/evening (depending on time-zone) I should just like to introduce myself in the time-honoured fashion. I live and work in the frozen wastes of the United Kingdom (actually it's been very temperate for the last few months, but it has this reputation...) I have written a couple of (linked but not serial) comedic fantasy novels and have a couple of Works In Progress. I am debating whether the first is good enough to publish - it has been kicking around for a while, has had a couple of dozen betas (predominantly, but not exclusively, friends and family) and love writing fiction 'cos I can just make stuff up. Despite having written 2-250,000 words of fiction, I struggle to write a birthday card...
Just wanted to say 'Hello' and glad to have you We're never sure if something is good enough to publish, are we? If we don't try we don't know, and the best I at least can do is let it sit for a few months and read it then over with a hopefully new view of stuff learned in the meantime. At which point I usually discover what I did wrong, and didn't know that I did. Anywawaway. Have fun with us and hang around!
Thank you - glad to be here. Have been lurking for a while, thought I'd jump in I spent 20 years in software suffering acute "imposter" syndrome - at least being new to writing I know the fear is genuine (c: Thank you @Carriage Return
Hi @Night Herald - it's a fun genre is it not?! I have a "serious" Sci-fi WIP but I keep returning to the light hearted stuff because it is so much fun to write
Be assured that it won't ever go away with writing. I'm now three years at it, and it only gets worse
Hi @Artifacs, and thank you. Sort of sci-fi I guess; I have about 25k of a "utopian dystopia" in progress which comes under sci-fi. The trouble with sci-fi these days is that if you pause for breath it becomes sci-fact!
That's true!! Sci-fi genre needs an ideological reboot or something to stay ahead these days and all dystopians settings need a lot of work to built. But Fantasy is a very walked road too. It's hard to come up with something new that catches on.
For a moment there I thought you're from the Roman Empire They don't pay very well anyway . BTW, friends and family are not useful when it comes to critique on your writings and don't count. Put stuff on the internet where people are vicious and will gladly tell you what's wrong with it. You need that. Those are your real readers and you need an independent opinion if you want to sell books. Of course, there's always the self-pub business where nobody cares and you shouldn't either. If you want to see your book in a shop (online of course), just put it there and bask in its sunshine. It's a great feeling to see your name in a bookshop of any sort, Amazon included. Warms up your cockles (since you brought up the weather)
Aelius Hadrianus Augustus me, of Ad Pontes. I have had sections critiqued on another writing forum, and gave the second book up to a "book club" - one of these groups of avid readers who nominate a book, read it, then discuss over tea one day (or wine...) - they used mine as a monthly read. I only knew one of them and they didn't know that I had written it so it was quite an experience to hear their initial impressions, and a very lively - and valuable - discussion when I revealed that I was the author. I also had a bit of crit from a friend who is a high fantasy writer who happened to have worked for one of the big publishing companies... Looking forward to getting involved in doing a bit of crit on here - I believe that I have learned more from critiquing the work of others than I have from putting my own work up!
That - I saw a video of Lee child speaking at Thrillerfest a couple of years back and he said that he goes through the 'what am I doing, this is crap, I'm not a writer' thing with everything he writes - the rest of the panel which included Michael Connelly and James Patterson agreed
Welcome, and yes, doing critiques has helped my writing as well. Yay Sci-fi! Can't wait to see whatchya got!
Hi @Bobby Burrows - My ol' man was from Croydon (which was probably a different place in 1922...) and I worked there for a year or so in a monolithic government building; amazingly from the canteen in the top you could see Canary Wharf to the east, the City in the middle, and the Wembley arch to the west - best view of London ever.
