Hello, my name is Daniel Young. I'm a 38 year-old unpublished writer from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. I was previously signed up to the forums a couple of years ago but the e-mail address I used back then is now defunct, so I registered again (I don't think I really posted much on my first visits here, though). I just wanted to introduce myself. I've enjoyed writing since the 6th grade, back in '86. I can still remember the day when our teacher introduced the class to creative writing, my first attempt at writing a story being a simple piece of fan fiction for the '80s cartoon Robotech. I wrote quite often through high school and at one time received a "Highly Commended" award from a Sydney newspaper for a 12-page short story about an organised crime war. I mostly enjoyed writing science fiction, though, but I had trouble coming up with my own ideas and continued along the fan fiction route with other stories set in the Robotech universe, aswell as that of the movies Alien and Aliens. I finished high school in '93 and went away from writng for a few years, until around '95 or '96 when I started writing another piece of Robotech fan fiction. I had a grand vision for this one and felt that if it was good enough I would try to get it published. However, after I had spent about a year on it and filled some 120 hand-written pages of A4 exercise books, I decided that I should try to come up with my own original story. Starting from scratch, I transported the general skeleton of the story to a setting similar to Robotech, a post-civil war USA. This time I was using an electronic typewriter to compose it, and got further into the story, with close to 200 pages of this second draft typed out. But as often happens, I soon lost interest and put it aside for a good year or two. I started a relationship in 2000 and didn't return to the story until '02, when I took a fresh look at it and, once again, made the decision to take it in a different direction. I moved the story to an entirely fictional world, one similar to our own, and enrolled in a course with the Australian College of Journalism called "How to Write a Best Seller" in order to kick-start my writing ambitions. The course was very helpful in fueling my hunger to be a successful writer, and I was able to compose a number of completely new chapters and shorter passages for the story during the period of the course. Unfortunately, life soon got in the way as I got married in '03 and had to change my priorities. When things settled down I became interested in writing sports fiction thanks to the computer game Title Bout Championship Boxing. It's a simulation game that features over 4,000 real life boxers who you can match up against each other. As an example, have you ever wondered what would happen if Muhammad Ali fought Mike Tyson? That's the kind of fight that you can simulate in the game. What I did with it, though, was to create an entire boxing world or "universe" populated with fighters from various eras, but set it in modern times. I chronicled the events that happened in this "boxing world" in newspaper reports, magazine articles and internet blogs. I would post these entries on the OOTP Developments forum (the company that created the game) and invited other members of the community to become involved in the story I was telling by having a fictional likeness of themselves in it as one of the competing boxers. It was a lot of fun, very enjoyable. But I had long realised that there was not much future in it as far as it becoming a published piece of work was concerned. Finally, about three or four months ago, I put it on indefinite hiatus and decided that I was going to focus all my creative energies on finally finishing the novel that I started writing all the way back in '96. Since then, I've been making steady progress with the novel, although I'm not moving as quickly as I would like to. My goal is to have it finished by the end of June, which might be a bit of a stretch. What I've had to do is pull together all the various sections that I've written over the years and try to make sense of them, because I have chapters from different stages of the story that are completely written. I just have to fill in the gaps, some of which are quite big. I'm hoping that by visiting this forum I'll be able to receive some advice, encouragement and criticism (and, of course, return it) that will help me come up with the best finished product I'm capable of, one that could possibly be published. Thanks. Daniel Young
Welcome to Writing Forums, Daniel! 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 requirements. 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. The requirements of the Writing Workshop don't apply to the contests, so new members are allowed (nay, encouraged!) to get stuck in and enter! If you have any questions or problems, then the moderators (myself, 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
Hi, Daniel welcome to the group! I'm trying out a fan fic piece right now for Sweet Valley High - he!he! I'm an 80's girl. I love writing short story sci-fi's too and am working on a novel - a kindof futuristic social post apocalyptic story. I'm trying to avoid using the word dystopian so I don't seem like someone chasing after the Hunger-Games bandwagon. As my story is nothing like it. It's slow going but I'm comforting myself with the slow and steady wins the race homily. Hopefully its true!
