Thanks for the warm welcome everyone
and thanks Silver the Wanderer for the blog, it helped a great deal
Wow Libby it's so cool that you had a dream that gave you an idea for a story cause about two months ago I had a similar experiance. I had this very amazing dream and when I woke up I was like whoa this is such a great story. I worked out the details in my head and now it is another of my stories that is waiting to be written on paper

Hi, everyone!! I'm sorry I haven't posted in such a long time...the reason being that I have not been able to get back to my writing This is my senior year in high school, so I'm up over my ears in schoolwork, and besides that my older sister had a baby and with all the hustle and bustle...my writing career is bring consumed by layers of dust and cobwebs....
I do hope to be able to start writing as soon as possible...maybe on vacations, when school will not be so pressing

FencerforJesus: I know this is a bit late, but congratulations!! I do hope and pray everything will go well and smoothly for you! I admire your perseverance!! I wish I had the same will you have...maybe my story would be coming to life instead of decaying in the dust...

Oh, and wild rose, welcome!!!

wild rose: thanks
ooh SO cool!
my story is rather weird, but it's sort of like a dream anyway (after all, it's based on a dream) meaning that the characters are having almost a real life dream in the events that take place in the story. and I am putting a personal touch. I myself am afraid of deep water and one of the characters in the story is going to have that fear and then as the story goes because of certain events she is able to stand up to that fear. I am actually having this whole story be about fears - the fears the characters have and how they overcome or stand up to those fears

Here is a question. Have any of you tried OneNote? It is a new program that comes with the Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition in the 2007 version (and now 2010 version). OneNote is like a fancy Notepad but it acts like sticky notes. It can come very useful in organizing characteristics of characters, plotlines, or a multitude of other things. You can organize groups of things into thier own groups and have whole pages dedicated to a single character, scene, and on another tab, you can shift and arrange how they go together like sicky notes or 3x5 index cards. I just got this with the new computer I got yesterday so with my future works, I am probably going to play with that instead of merely having a Word document keep track of my ideas. Once you play around with it some, you grow to like it.

Fencer, OneNote is the program I use, and I love it! It's so easy to keep track of things. I have different sections for Characters (where each character gets their own page), Plot (which has various outlines, scenes that I'm planning but haven't actually written yet, etc.), Names (for when I think of good ones that I might want to use later on), "Articles" (various tidbits of information about my story world that may or may not make it into my book), and References. My References tab is very interesting - I've been posting pictures I find online that look like what I've imagined my fictional people or places to look like. It makes them easier to describe. You must try out the "Clip" feature - you can select anything on your computer screen (articles, pictures, posts, anything) and paste it onto OneNote as an image. It's very handy! I love that feature. And another neat thing about the program is it saves everything automatically as you're typing it, so you don't have to worry clicking "Save" every time you close out.

Ooooh yes, I love OneNote.

That's good that I'm not the first to think of it. I haven't put it to use yet, because I just got my computer two days ago, and my school works makes things a bit more pressing.

I just heard back from Lighthouse. They got my contract and check. They said they could start typesetting in about 3 weeks. That translates to getting it set up for printing. In the meantime, I imagine they have an editor going through the final bit. So it suddenly becomes possible that my book may be released before Christmas (my mom's desire). I will keep you all posted as it gets closer to that time.

Before Christmas? Wow, these guys are on the ball! I always hear about the editing/etc. being such a long process. Then and again, I'm beginning to think that's because it's the writer working with the editor to get a story set up PERIOD and also to write it and revise it, etc.

I'm just guessing it is before Christmas. But Lighthouse moves a lot faster than most other real publishers (ie the ones that won't just accept a horrible piece of written trash) because they want the author to get the novel to about 95-98% ready to publish before even submitting it. The real editing process is when the editor has to haggle with the author and attempt to make a first draft into a masterpiece. MANY rejections these days are due to that.

Now I just wait for the editor to finish reading/editing in detail, which is what I am guessing is these next three weeks and then we will see what happens. I really hope I am included in the final acceptance of the novel and cover art. That wasn't really specified, but I don't think they would pass it over me on that. I will keep you posted when a more realistic release date starts taking form. In the meantime, I need to make sure I keep ahead of all my classes, because I don't want piled up homework when this hits. It's so close I can taste it.

Well, I don't know why I've never posted in here. I have started about 15 books. I have two series going on. One is about four cousins who solve mysteries in a little town in Alaska. The other series is about teenage girls who are not at all related or know each other in any way. I have finished only one book in the first series (about the cousins) but it's only 11,555 words so I really think it should be quite a bit longer.

Also, I tend to write books that involve teenagers using guns. Not to shoot people or anything but to hunt or, because these are mysteries, to capture people and that tends to be frowned upon. I have these kids using guns responsibly just the way I was raised but still, people tend to not like that.

I also have one sci-fi/fantasy in the works. I have at least 12 books partly written and only one finished. Sad I know. I'm going to be starting an adventure/legal thriller for NaNoWriMo. I'm looking forward to writing it. It's going to be a little bit John Grishamish.

It's good to see new faces on this thread. There are a lot more writers and aspiring authors than many realize. And as I've said before, please don't be intimidated by my getting published. I was once just like everyone else, if not worse. I don't know if my book will ever get to that best seller list. I didn't write to do that. I wrote to tell a story and to help people see truths about Christianity and spiritual warfare, which are best described through a fiction setting. It my book cannocal? It is the same as Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker. It is fiction. It is meant to get people to search the Scriptures and understand there is so much more to Christianity than mere church and good deeds. That is why I wrote.

For others, they just have ideas they want to see written down, and that work is not meant to get published to a wide audience. And that's ok. But like with a friend of mine who was the inspiration to get me started, many people struggle with simply getting to work on it. I went so fast because my brain tends to hyper-focus. Once I get started, I go the distance. So I want to encourage that even if some are slower at writing and keeping going than others are, to keep going. I don't plan to make my writing be my profession. I don't have that kind of creativity to pump a novel out every year or something like that. But keep going. Just finishing a story is well above what most people can say and let me tell you: that is an accomplishment worth holding on to.

The process of writing my novel has done way more than just accomplish something for me. It has matured my skills as a writer, and more importantly it has matured my faith. In the process of writing this novel, I have faced demonic opposition (long story that I can tell later, and many who've been here for 3 1/2 years or more know about it. It also became a key plot point for it), rejection, the pull of vanity publishers, and have learned more how to be patient and to trust in the Lord in his timing. And when Lighthouse contacted me, I was ready to turn them down if compelled by the Lord to do so. But God is so good and when you trust him and follow his lead, his plan is so much better than any man can conjure. I am really looking forward to see where God takes this next.

Hmmm....besides not having time to write (I have to work on math lab reports instead. grrrrrr ) I also appear to be suffering a sort of Boring Main Character Syndrome. The heroine is obviously the least interesting person in the story. Everyone else gets more interesting things to do or say. I've been trying to solve this, but there's too much else to do. I've made a little progress on the character problem by outlining more of her personality, but all the cool stuff she does comes later in the story. I'm wondering if this is due to the fact that I almost always like side characters better than the hero when I read.

I'm still feeling really uninspired - I can't write in any of my novels, though I did realize how I could combine a few idea's (thanks, Gail Carson Levine, and Silver the Wanderer). I just don't feel fit to be able to write. I really know that everything I write is pretty silly, and not at all good, and I don't think I'm capable of really being able to write a novel.
But I'll still try.

wow, today my writer's block suddenly lifted and I began to write the story I explained on the last page! it's coming out really well!

Elanor, don't be too hard on yourself! Everyone has to start somewhere, and the fact that you're trying is what sets you apart from the thousands of others who give up before writing the first word. Don't give up! And trust me, there's no such thing as "silly" writing. The more you write, the better you'll get. The first novel I wrote could be considered "silly" because it was inspired by Pokemon and Hamtaro, and the main villian's name was Nick. Pretty funny, right? But those pages and pages of so called "silliness" helped me to improve, and it got me hooked on writing. By the time I was done, I was a much better writer than I was when I started. And now, after finishing my second novel, I've improved yet again! So keep trying and don't give up on your "silliness"!

Awesome, Libby! Hope you keep at it!

I can definately attest to the 'silliness' writing. My early writings were not just silly, they were by any editor's means: BAD. But as Silver the Wanderer stated, it is practice. Getting your ideas on paper is the most difficult part of it. Editing it to be presentable is not necessarily hard but just the most time consuming. My first draft was bad. It had an okay plot, but it was a long way from being a masterpiece. It was to the point where I needed to scrap the whole thing and start over. But guess what? That is a good thing.

One of the things I am learning in my Computer Software Engineering class this semesters is about building prototypes for the product we are going to build. A prototype is simply something that describes what a product will do, even without actual implementation. Some prototypes are designed for throwing away and others for evolving. The throwaway types are simply to get a response from the client and the evolving ones are what we build on towards the product.

My first draft became a throwaway. Was that a waste of time? NO! It gave me other ideas on how to present what I had in my head better. It gave me writing experience on characterizations, descriptions, plot devices, and the like. When I did my second draft, I had matured as a writer and as a person. I took the characters and scenes I liked and reworked them. They became better characters, better scenes, and an overall better product.

But it all comes down to doing that first throwaway draft. That first draft is what gets you going. It gives you a chance to see what your vision is on paper. And if you don't like it, but do like some parts, you know what to keep and what not to keep. Perhaps a scene it really good and needs to be kept, but it doesn't fit where it is. Then move it. Some things may need to change about it, but the core of the scene will remain. I have another friend who had me read his first draft that was 1/2 to 3/4 finished. He got stuck. I told him to finish it, gave him some ideas on where the plot could go. He needed a lot of editing on it, but he had a good story at the core. So I recommend to keep going. There are many who give up at a road block, but the ones that press on can truly say they accomplished something.

Writing a book does more for you as a person than just saying you wrote a book. I will be able to put my novel down on a resume, not for brownie points, but the fact that I wrote a novel shows character. It shows patiences, perserverence through a project. If if I didn't get my book published, I could still use my writing experience in resume and job interview letters because the fact that I finished it, it shows character. It shows problem solving abilities. It shows drive to finish something. And it will be something you can rely on later in life. Or if you are of the 'more experienced' crowd, you can rely on life experiences to help you push through the project. It really can be something that will impact you for the rest of your life, whether it would get published or not.