Writing

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How do you get into writing? Anyone who does it (either as a hobby or profession) care to tell me how you start etc. Just any information or advice really....

What I've gleaned from stacks of self-help books on how to write, how to write more effectively, etc cetera, is, ultimately - whatever works for you is the right way for you.

I've wanted to write seriously all my life, was told by my teachers all through school that I had a talent for it and I love the creative process. Problem was, I didn't know about my AS or the Inattentive ADHD that went with it, so while I could toss off pages or paragraphs or even a short story with relative ease, anytime I set out to tackle anything novel length, which was what I really wanted to do, I'd get several scenes put down on paper, with only a vague, hazy picture in my head of what the details of the story were going to be or what was going to tie these widely flung scenes together into a coherent narrative.

Some of the first How-To books I read insisted that you couldn't write a novel without an outline - that before you could even begin to create individual scenes, there had to be an existing skeletal structure over which to drape the entire story. Well, I don't have the Executive Function to pull that off, and I got overwhelmed even thinking about it, and then discouraged when I couldn't do it, and would eventually throw the parts I had in a drawer and just give up. I didn't throw them away, I just had no idea how to move forward with any of it.

Finally, two years ago, a fresh story idea presented itself to me and just would not leave me alone. This story was determined to be told and was not going to take "I can't' for an answer, so I decided this time I was going to by-gods find a way to put this thing together come hell or high water. I decided this time, instead of trying to imagine up an entire populated world ahead of time, to just begin with a first scene and go forward from there, building the whole thing up piece by piece, in serial fashion. I would not be distracted by scenes from Chapter 18, before I finished Chapter 12, no matter how urgently or vividly they presented themselves, because that would only cause me to get anxious about events in Chapter 14 that I hadn't considered yet.

So that's what I did, started at the beginning and plodded straight toward the end. In the meantime, several other interesting things happened. One was, I read an interview (in Entertainment Weekly online, I think) with Stephen King and Lindlehoff and Cuse, the writers of the show LOST, in which they all talked about not being able to write by outlines and how they just started and went forward. So it seemed I was in good company there (until I saw the LOST finale, which demonstrated just how horribly astray things can go when you literally have NO CLUE where your story is going), though I can see in some of King's work, that there are times this technique works beautifully for him and others when it causes an otherwise well-told tale to kind of peter out to nothing or get lost in its own convolutions (IT comes to mind). More often than not, though it seems to work out well for him - of course, he's Stephen effing King. When you sh*t books like a human printing press, the law of averages says some of them will be winners.

So I'm slow as Christmas, but after months and months of gradual but steady forward movement, I have more than two thirds of a book finished. In fact, I figure about 60 more pages and it'll be in the can. Of course this is the climax of the story, so I'm starting to feel the pressure to pull out my best game, but I'm confident now that I will make the finish line this time. Then I'll worry about whether or not I can get it published. An ex of mine sent part of a different unfinished project to a publisher several years ago and they expressed an interest in paying an advance for me to complete it, but I turned it down - I just couldn't take money for something that I wasn't even sure I could finish. The pressure would have made my head explode.

Oh, the other odd coincidental thing that happened this time. When I was first getting started, I had a prologue and first chapter done and I took it to work with me one day and showed it to the wife of the Shop owner, who's an avid reader, just to get a sense of whether what I was doing could capture the attention - I wanted to see if without any prompting from me, she had any questions about the characters and their fates after reading just a few pages. That would tell me whether the story was worth telling, or at least whether I had what it takes to keep a reader focused. Not only did she have several questions, one of them I couldn't even begin to answer, because it was about a character in the prologue that I had never intended to make a part of the central story - he was just a device for setting the rest of the thing up.

Once the question had been asked, though, and I began to consider it, a floodgate in my subconscious just broke open and this character's entire life story came rushing out in a fever dream - I couldn't take notes fast enough, the pictures in my head were streaming so rapidly. By the time I stopped writing, I had an entire backstory timeline that covered nearly a hundred years and three generations of characters. To quote Keanu Reeves - Woah! So anyway, that's not really advice, just an anecdote, but it goes to show you how ideas can come from anywhere once you open yourself up to the process.

Now see what I've done here? If I could pour this story out of my head as fast as I babble here on WP, I'd have been finished more than a year ago.

My question is, whether you are already writing. If not, start. Write anywhere, any time when you have the time, about anything you want. Write write write. Then write some more.

Ya gotta have something to show before you get involved with finding agents and publishers.

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Lots of people there are trying to write and some are not too bad.

I just got royally fed up with a couple of people and started writing to vent, casting them as the bad guys. I had no idea that I was starting a novel, let alone that I would finish it two years later. Novel writing turns out to be a bit addictive. Now it's not starting, but stopping, that I wouldn't know how to do.

Getting published... well, that is another matter. I'll let you know if I ever figure out how to get started with that.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember. I'm not sure how I 'got into it'; I'm just hyperlexic. It's just natural for some.

When I write, I improvise around a general plot and a number of characters. A few months ago, I finished my first novel, for once to my complete satisfaction. It took at least two years to get to this stage. Three if you count me coming up with the concept.

I now have to write one by the end of the year for the Terry Pratchett Prize.

Here are two writing rules (for fiction) that I came up with that I try to follow without exception:
1. Reversed commonality is not originality.
2. Don’t use too much symbolism because that means you got nothing to say. Don’t use too much intense images, for that means the same thing. But if you got nothing but something to say, then it might as well be non-fiction.

The question as it's posted is extremely open ended too. Writing as a hobby is extremely different from writing as a profesion.

As a hobby, you can do pretty much whatever you want to, however you like, and it really doesn't matter what kind of writing you're doing. If it's just a hobby just start writing, anywhere, any time, about whatever you like. You'll develop a style as you go. I wouldn't recommend pursuing it as a profession until you've been doing it as a hobby for a while. Get a sense of yourself, who you are as a writer, and what you're good at, and what you're not so good at.

As a profession, it's very different because money comes into the equation. The type of writing too, will change what avenues you would pursue.

What do you, or do you want to write? Poetry? Stories? Editorials? If you aren't sure of that yet, you probably need more time doing it as a hobby.

what it mean, 'reversed commonality'? Does one write about the uncommon?...

I use a guideline, but somehow the story always sees it as damage, and routes around it...
Half the time, I have to write just to see what happens next.

If you're having fun, you're probably doing good writing. If you're writing because you're already bored with it, maybe that's not so good...

I got into writing at around fifth grade. I found out I had a talent in it, and I had some ideas, and it sort of took off from there.

in a former life i wrote tech manuals/test methods for labs. also created a curriculum for teaching quality control procedures.

went from there to writing fiction......and then on to non-fiction. had some articles published in the international mensa magazine.

wrote a short non-fiction book about being a pariah....'loser'. tried for some time to find an agent or publisher who would just look at it. absolutely a waste of time and money. having a.s. was a hinderance, of course, but not one reply. from what i can tell, this is common. even in nt land.

went self-publishing route and this proved to be worthwhile. printers did a great job. minimum cost for 100 copies was 3000 bucks, soft(perfect) binding.

just write. write what you know. fiction? ok, write what you know. try to find someone you trust for critique.

If you're just talking about how to do the writing itself (not the publishing and that other crap), then just damn well write. I write stuff on my iPhone all the time, everything I've written was done in the Notes app, usually while I was laying in bed tired. People, including multiple English teachers, seem to think it's quite good, though, and I got an A in my English GCSE.

There's no list of guidelines for something like this, it's creative and needs to come from you, not someone else.

wow thanks everyone

I like writing but don't do it particularly often at the moment. I always hear lots of people saying theyre writers or that they write as a hobby but that's such a vague thing to say (as some of you pointed out) so I wondered exactly what people meant when they said this. Like, what they do, how they do it, what they used to help them, etcc.

&Willard i hate outlines too! i had one teacher at school who always insisted that we wrote a 'plan' for out stories/essays- even the plan had to be in a set format(which she created). i always used to write the piece first and then just go back an scribble down a plan to make it seem like it'd been there all along. I always got a bit panicked when she said we had to write a plan and didn't understand how i was supposed to know how something ends before id even started writing it. and it ended up being detrimental rather than helpful because the whole way through i'd be influenced by the pre-planned ending and overly conscious of making sure my writing ended up in the 'right' place

Yeah, it's really a lot simpler than people think it is.

Writers write. A lot. Non writers write only when it's necessary.

Professional writing is quite different, but if all you want to do is "become a writer," then yeah, just DO IT!