I am 23 and I never did much creative writing before about a year ago. I didn't have the confidence even to finish a creative writing project for school, but I absolutely loved writing essays. I really like writing and I want to eventually publish something. I have two stories started, but I've decided to focus on my young adult novel as sort of a practice run. The other one is a more involved fantasy story that I think has the potential to be pretty decent. I want to be able to do it justice. In the meantime I need to catch up on all that practice I didn't get as a kid writing fantasy and just messing around. Hoping to get some feedback on my writing and see the cool things that other people come up with.
Welcome! Good luck with your writing - it's great that you've found something you're really interested in.
Welcome to Writing Forums, brynneth! 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. 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
Thank you both. I made this profile a year ago and then hit a slump. I've been feeling much more productive lately and really want to get engaged in the community here to keep myself going.
Check out the RPG portion of the forum if your are intrested in getting into creative writing. It's alot of fun.
Yooou should definetly check out the 'New World' RPG. But seriously, RPGs are the way to get started, in my opinion. It keeps you writing creativly, and you start to see really cool plots and characters develope. It's like working out a bunch: if you don't see resaults, you'll lose heart. With RPGs, you are rewarded constantly by a developing plot that seems to carry itself away and become something extremely exciting. Then again, maybe I'm just trying to get new members for MY RPG... Heheheh good luck out there, Love to Write!
Welcome back to the writing scene. I feel the same way as well. I get so many story ideas but not enough motivation to even get started--it's a strange paradox because I feel that I may ruin the elegance of the idea by doing a shoddy job of crafting it. Whatever the reason for not being able to start and finish a story, I hope you find what it takes--here--to get back on your feet. You should write short stories. They don't even have to be legitimate plots. Just pick, like, three topics (e.g. person, location, ethical idea, moral idea, hobby, something fantastical, etc.) and challenge yourself to mesh them together--think about how you can make a plot out of it--and write a draft. Of course, take the burden of writing a best seller off your shoulders and simply have fun with these; think of them as daily or weekly exercises. That's just an idea. I'm sure the people here have more ideas.
Thanks, that seems like good advice. I've been doing some of that, just for practice. I will definitely try to remember to do more. I'm trying really hard to get in the habit of knocking out a short story, or a 55 word story, or even a terrible poem anytime I'm really stuck on my novel. It seems like just doing anything is better than staring at the page for two hours and then reading cracked.com for the rest of the night... Which I never do, of course. I worry about ruining a good idea, too. It's part of what made me stop writing my first novel. This young adult story I'm working is basically designed to remove that panic. I feel like the bar is lower and I can relax and just do it. Once I feel like my skill is a little higher I'll force myself to return to my first book.
Done that before, don't worry. I will check it out. I've never tried it before, so it might take me a little while to get over my shyness about new stuff. I promise to try it at some point though
I feel the same about RPG games. When I feel personally stunted in a story line, it's always nice to fire up the Xbox and dwell in another realm. My first real practice with story lines came from the olden days of AOL and text based "chat room" RPGs.
