Monday, February 28, 2011

First Few Pages

The idea of the book is now firmly set in my mind, after several days of deep thought about it.

I started writing, and it is the first time I've written for three consecutive days without interruption. After reading The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, I can tell you that the best advice found there is to Keep Writing, always moving forward.

In my previous writing projects I kept revising and editing on the fly, which really took away from my ability to generate new material. This time, I'm focusing on writing, leaving the process of self-editing to the time when the first draft is complete.

Being able to just write free me from worrying about the end result, and lets me focus on the plot, the story and the way things move forward in my story.

I plan to do some more reading about the Art of Being a Writer. There are many good books out there, but the The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes is definitely worth reading. It presents 38 "don'ts" with good reasoning and good advice on how to avoid those pitfalls.

For now, I simply concentrate on that one advice - keep moving forward!
  

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Beast of Burden - Conceptualization

I had a moment of revelation yesterday while driving back home from work. For several days I've been thinking about an idea for my book, trying to describe the concept of the book in one line. I use this mental exercise whenever I'm working on a new writing project (mostly when designing new campaign settings for my role-playing groups).



While driving in the crowded streets of my home town on my way back from work, one sentence poped into my head, and three seconds later I was grinning like a madman.

I've got it.

I won't tell you about it - I want to think about it some more before committing to it - but I shared it with my wife and she approved. All I can say is that it's fiction, it's not totally wild and it should be very interesting to work on it and see how it develops.

More to follow soon.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Beast of Burden

Beast of Burden is the codename for my newest writing project. It's a book - a novel - that I decided it is time for.

I was playing with the thought of writing a book for some time now, and even made some first steps, like acquiring books about style and fiction writing. I know it's not an easy task, but I feel that it can be done, and furthermore, that I can do it.

So, what's the book about? I'm not sure I know...I currently play with some ideas and plan to use this blog as a tool to shape and refine them. But it is fiction. Oh, and if writing a book isn't interesting enough - I plan to do it on my iPad!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Celebrating!

It's a good month. Celebrating my 34th birthday, getting my Masters Degree AND acquiring a shiny new iPad makes this one of the best months I've had in some time now.

So now that I have more free time on my hands, I plan to do a lot more writing. Twittering, Blogging, and even a new book I've started working on, not to mention the tons of GM notes my bi-weekly role-playing group generates.

Here's for fresh starts!