Hello, While it gave me great joy to find this site I must admit that it will take me some time to explore all it has to offer. I see so many interesting posts that it is hard to know where to start. My background is electronic design and computer programming. After my retirement, about ten years ago, I started writing computer programs related to trading stocks. Earlier this year I decided to find a new hobby. Knowing someone who published his first book got interested in writing for fun. It's all new to me: I never wrote a story in my life and grammar is one of the subjects I didn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole. So, yes: I have some work cut out for me. Since I love reading hard science fiction and technical articles about future technology I drafted a few trial pages. It turned out to be great fun. I enjoy researching technical topics and speculating about the course of future technologies, thus HSF might be my niche. I look forward to being able to take part in forum activities. Herman
Welcome to Writing Forums, Herman! I hope you find what you're looking for here, whatever your interests in writing. This forum aims to provide the best workshopping resources on the internet, and to that end we have a few rules which you should familiarise yourself with before you get stuck in. The main section of the site is the Writing Workshop, where members can post their writing in order to receive critique of their work. However, before we allow members to post their work, they must have met some basic requirments. Firstly, you must have been a member for fourteen days, and have made twenty posts on the forum overall (please note, posts in Word Games do not count towards this). This is so that members, when they post their work, have familiarised themselves with the forums and contributed to them (as well as hopefully learned something for themselves). Secondly, members must provide two constructive reviews of other people's work for each piece of their own that they wish to post. This is because we believe that the focus of workshopping should be equally upon giving reviews as receiving them, as they allow a writer to practice and improve their editing skills, which they can then apply to their own writing. Beyond the Writing Workshop, you will find that we have extensive forums for discussion of aspects of writing, as well as a community area for general discussion. We also run periodic short story and poetry contests, which are good for challenging yourself and expanding your skills. If you have any questions or problems, then the moderators (myself, Cogito, Lemex and Dante Dases) should be your first port of call. Any technical problems with the site itself should be directed to Daniel, the site administrator and owner. I would recommend you have a look over the rules so that you know what to expect, and what is expected. But aside from that, I hope you enjoy your time here. Banzai
