I’m working on becoming a writer. I’m not planning on quitting my day job but it would be nice to get a few things published here and there. One of my early plans when I started blogging was to use it as practice for getting some articles published in magazines and maybe even writing a book or so.
The internet is an amazing distraction for avoiding accomplishing goals.
So anyway, I’m getting back to practicing writing and thinking about writing.
Over the last couple weeks, I wrote a rough draft for what could be an book for kids around 4th grade. It ended up being way to short (about 8000 words – it should have been closer to 20,000) and I’d have to completely rewrite the first third for it to make any sense. But it’s a start. It has pirates, garden gnomes, a crazy scientist, some magic and a mean squirrel. I’ll come back and try to edit it into a reasonable 2nd draft some day.
I was planning on starting a short story over the weekend. I was going to spend a couple weeks polishing it up and then go back and write the 2nd draft of that kids’ book. While I was playing with it in my head, I decided to torture myself with another attempt at a book so I spent most of the weekend outlining instead and got a shocking amount of the plot outlined, characters identified, and actually wrote a couple scenes. This one will be for adult crowds.
About a week ago, I also volunteered to be interviewed (along with a bunch of other parents) for an article someone is writing that could potentially end up in Parenting Magazine. I filled out the questionnaire and emailed it back. I’m hoping to get the nerve to actually query a few magazines this year and see if I can get something that I write published.
One of my other writing goals is to write more guest posts. In fact, there is a post I wrote that just went up over at The Struggling Writer where I talk about just shutting up and writing.
I’m glad to see that I’m following my own advice for once instead of chasing dust bunnies around the internet.
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Wandered over from your wife’s blog.
I highly recommend Stephen King’s book On Writing. The first bit is autobiographical but the second part is practical advice for becoming an author.
Katy, Thanks for the recommendation. That is a very excellent book. I would also recommend that to anyone that likes to dabble in writing.