Hi, My name is Carl Andrew, I admit my reading and writing has been lacking lately but I am hoping to remedy that. I am 23 years old and have two sons, throughout my teenage years I read a lot of Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett books along with many other authors, but His Dark Materials was and still are my favourite books of all time. I don't have a lot of time for writing and at the moment it is still very much just a hobby. I have no formal education in literature as I am sure will become apparent but believe I have a very active imagination and it often leads me to write short stories in my spare time as if I didn't I feel they would go to waste. I am starting on a new novel now, hopefully in the years to come I can finish it; but I look here for criticism that my wife or friends won't give me honestly. According to them my writing is flawless, though I certainly know that is not the case. I have just started to use semicolons because I just realised recently my Literature teacher in school never taught anyone in our class what they were used for. Anyway, I will enjoy the myriad of information at my disposal here and am actively searching and scratching my head over what a semicolon is used for. I hope you don't mind having me here and do not take my writing here as an indication of my writing style
Welcome to Writing Forums, Carl! 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 and Cogito) 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
