I've been writing almost daily for almost all of the past ten years. Most of the writing is anecdotal short stories that I would not publish in entirety and wrote originally to semi-private online journals. There is a lot of essays, poems, and personal reflection in first person, with some random short stories here and there; mostly though, there are manifestos about how I see the world, and how I came to see it that way. There are at least a dozen unfinished manuscripts, some consisting of over 20k to 30k words, and some consisting of a few typed pages and a lot of notes, outlines, character development models, and settings. I have written magical realism, fantasy, romance, erotica, general literature, autobiographical anecdotes, non-fiction, and what I call graphomania; however, all of these manuscripts for novels have been left unfinished. I have a problem with becoming overwhelmed by the attempt to organize my writing as more writing is added. I have issues with maintaining consistency over long-term works. I have issues with not retiring a manuscript and starting a new one when it becomes too overwhelming for me. This is largely due to the fact that I have OCD tendencies that involve compulsive writing. This means that sometimes what I write may be exactly what I wanted, but other time it may be a load of garbage, repetitive shit, obsessive fixation on the same ideas, and invariably, the need to read through documents of passages that need editing, deleting, organizing, and modifying -- and only need more of it with every passage I add. I'm learning to control my graphomania and organizing myself better, that I only write what I plan to write, and only change plans when I'm not writing. I joined this community to aid me, to give me resources, opinions, and input from other writers who may have overcome similar problems that I have with finishing novels. I've decided recently that I'm not allowed to start any new projects until I finish something in my manuscripts folder. I'm looking to publish my first book as an ebook, so talking with anyone involved or experienced with that would be valuable to me. At this point, I'm not interested in sharing my current novel publicly here, but I do look forward to discussions about writing.
Welcome to Writing Forums, Shane! 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
