I often have trouble writing when it seems like I'm the only one who gives a flip, and while I wouldn't wish that difficulty on anyone I'm hoping there's someone in a similar situation just this once. I'm looking for someone to email with on a weekly basis. We can bounce ideas off of each other, beta read for each other, whatever else comes to pass. Who knows, we may end up collabing on a single story at one point, it's up to you.
I had more of an issue with that with my last attempt at a book. It still happens, but not as much. I kind of decided to just buckle down and do it no matter what, setting a weekly goal that I'm very strict about. Still, I know the feeling, and that sounds like something I might be interested in, but we should make sure we're both writing genres the other is interested in, I think, for beta reading to be effective. My book is high fantasy with a focus on action, and I'm about 3 weeks away from finishing my first draft. What's your genre and progress? I assume it's a novel?
It's a novella anthology set in a sci-fantasy setting. I'm actually just getting started on this iteration, I keep losing my manuscripts
What are you writing in, or rather, how are you losing the manuscripts? Are you keeping them on thumb drives?
I only recently started typing them in a word processor. Florida weather sucks the ink out of the paper sometimes. My shelf is full of ruined notebooks with a dozen incarnations of the characters between them
Oh geez. Yeah, that sucks. I didn't know that kind of thing would happen so quickly. So what are your plans then? Do you have a timeline you set to follow? I'm hoping to have my second draft done by later this year so I can have it out to betas with enough time for edits before a writer's conference in February. Also, how would you like the weekly emails to go? Just what exactly are you looking for? Do you just want to bounce ideas off each other, or are you looking to share critique on segments? It sounded like you were more or less open to anything, but I imagine there must be something specific your after. Also also, sci-fantasy is nice. My other book on the back burner is that (though it will likely be broken up into either a trilogy or novella series once I go back to it). May I ask what the genre/tone of the story is, though? Is is romance, action, mystery, dark?
Well, I'm hoping the first volume in the story I'm working on would be about 45k words, ish, so I might have a *very* rough draft within the next couple months based on my writing speed and my family's moving situation, and basic editing done within a few weeks of that. Hopefully, HOPEFULLY, the final product of the first volume will be on Amazon early next year with volume 2 not far behind. As for the weekly emails, it might be a little dicey at first, but I'd like to think it would be like a weekly update on each other's progress levels. Throwing ideas around, suggestions, etc. "Hey, I just thought of...flerberhurgber... What if... samurai toasters..." Once or twice a week we email each other for that kind of conversation. It's basically and adventurers academy. I'm on a coin toss between naming it OmniQuest or Camelot Academy. It follows a team of four through the academy and beyond. I'd like to say that there's romance, but I'm not good at that and the market driven shiz makes my brain hurt, so it's mostly YA Fantasy/Sci-Fantasy. (I've been told that when keeping the science in the science fiction, I'm too nitpicky, so I'm staying away from total sci-fi.)
Alright, sounds good. No focus on romance is just fine with me, and it sounds like a potentially fun series. I doubt I'll be tossing any ideas out for critique just yet; the only thing I'm not sure of for my current story at this point is the ending, and that's kind of something I'd like to keep to myself unless I get desperately stuck. Once I start making my way through the second draft though, I might toss some ideas around for a sequel and see what you think. I'd honestly probably prefer to go to my back burner book, but that's such a big project that I'm kind of intimidated by it now. I guess it just depends on how well received my characters are in my current story. If they get the boos, then they get the boot and the other story'll worked on next.
A novella is a short novel by an author. An anthology is a collection of work by several authors. You'll want to learn these terms and what they mean if you want your work to be taken seriously.
That's what I get for using google. I was of the understanding that an anthology was a series, my understanding didn't include "multiple authors", not being arrogant, just ignorant. I don't pretend to know everything, writing is something I do to entertain myself, I just have difficulty finishing stories for that very reason.