A little pimping...

So, I'm a member of Young Writers Society, run by the ever-fabulous Nathan Caldwell. It's a online community of writers, mostly aged 13 to 25, with wonderful reviews, a chat room, forums about just about everything, live feeds of friend activity, blogs, and a whole crap-load more. I've been a member for three years and running now and I can't think of leaving. The people are awesome, the site is awesome, it's just awesome.

But there is something even more awesome looming in the future...

Nate is currently working on a sort of sister-site to YWS, called Writer Feed, which he has developed based on all the things he knows now that he had wished he had known about when he began YWS. The idea behind it is social networking for writers, aimed mostly at writers 18+ as a more serious alternative to YWS. It's set to launch really, really soon (the date's sort of nebulous, since Nate's programming in his free time - something like 20 hours of work remain, I understand) and I am super-crazy excited. A review and more pimping will come when it does finally launch (right now, the above link just leads to a spiffy "coming soon"-type page).

But, in the meantime...

Nate has given us WriterFeedPad, which is simply awesome. Similar in concept to Google Docs or other online document sites, it gives you a place online to type up documents and the like. The formatting tools are fairly simple, but for a short story or novel or just notes to yourself, it's perfect. Plus, the really cool things about it are the way you can make a pad public or share it with other users (so that more than one person can be working on the same pad - each shows up as a different color) and it tracks the revisions in real time (and has the niftiest slider bar thing that will literally take you through every change you make in a document in a sort of running film way, allowing you to stop at any time and export that particular place in revision as a document). It's already linked to YWS, but apparently it's also going to be hooked up to WF when it finally launches!

Super, super excited. I've been using WriterFeedPad for several documents already, putting in some handwritten notes and drafts of my hedgehog story and even hashing out some scenes from an idea that just won't leave me alone tonight (for real, it's again around midnight and my brain won't shut off).

Writing magazines...

I was given a subscription to Writer's Digest as a gift a while back and it just expired last month. I was always excited to open the mailbox and find my copy of WD, but I can't say it always "spoke" to me as a writer. I think this might be a) because I'm not in the market trying to publish right now and b) it is not a discussion.

I have never tested the publishing waters, so I can't even say whether any of the dozens of articles of advice on the subject in WD will help me down the line. I'm only interested in the writing aspect of writing right now. Even reading interviews with authors, I tended to skip their "how I made my big break" stories, preferring to read their methods or silly little anecdotes. Not to say I never want to be published, but the columns and columns of publishing "how-to" is not what I want right now.

Instead, I've recently rediscovered the amazingness of writers' blogs. Besides being mildly obsessed with Two Swords, One Pen right now and trawling through some recent recommendations made to me, I've been searching lately for writers' blogs. Not necessarily published author's blogs (though not necessarily not), just people who enjoy the craft of writing.

I enjoy reading people's trials, tribulations and successes in their writing. I enjoy reading their musings about elements of writing. I enjoy reading the ramblings of a writer who can't seem to find the words to describe a particular concept and so forces me to try and put my own words to it.

I think I've been spoiled on Young Writers Society with its vast community constantly teaching one another. Rather than someone coming down all high and mighty to instruct us lowly scribblers on how to do something, I much prefer a group of people hashing it all out together. You don't have to take any one person's method as absolute, but can glean and modify it all.

I enjoy the discussion almost as much as the solution. And I love reading about writing. So, as much as I did enjoy digging into my latest copy of WD, I don't think I'll be renewing my subscription. I think it's time for some hardcore blog searching.

Beginning at the beginning...

Looking for a place to begin a story? A member of the online community "Young Writers Society" summed up your options perfectly.

"1) The source of the conflict (ex: if the conflict is about a war, you might want to start by going back to the moment war was declared, revealing the reasons why it's happening)
2) The day the MCs life changes. It will start off a bit slow, so you want to be careful not to bore people.
3) A point later in the plot where the MC is drawn to reflect on how they got into this situation (setting things up for you to go back to a less interesting but still relevant point earlier in the plot)
4) Character history. Pick a moment in either the protagonist's (MC) or the villains life that was significant to their development and share that. Then skip forward to the 'present' so people can see how they're changed. (Works kind of the same as a flash back). "

http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic49709.html

Yup. It's pretty awesome.