For Aspiring Authors!

[somedude]

Hey I thought since I'm a published professional I'd start an advice thread for aspiring authors...that's people who are looking to get there work published still Thought I'd post some links and let people ask me questions...so ask way!

[somedude]

Here's a link to a really good list of erotica publishers and how to submit work to them!

http://www.erotica-readers.com/ERA/G/Call_For_Submissions.htm

[Grm]

Thank you Somedude, listen guys this man is a real writer, we are privileged to have to have him contributing to our board.

[The_PG]

Dude, where's my car?

Actually I have a serious question; how would you suggest helping someone who cannot stay on task for me then a day?

I often will begin or write short stories in about 1-2 hours, 5-8 pages and never, ever, ever feel like going back and completing the story.

My most successful strategy so far has been writing a 19 page short story in three parts, about 3-4 weeks apart for each 'chapter', but it still doesn't have what I fully want in it. Plus i'm looking at it to perhaps go back and turn it into an erotic short (it's basically just a Mature story), but yet whenever I pull it out to do so I get easily distracted or can't think of where to begin.

Any suggestions?

[somedude]

Your car is where you left it Now to your other question... I had this same problem when I first started writing! I would have an idea, write part of it and then not finish the story and move on to something else without finishing it. Well I still do that once in a while
My advice would be to set aside the story you completed for now and work on another project. Pic an idea for a story you really want to and think on it for a couple of weeks without writing. Once you feel like the story is about to explode out of your head sit down and write for a couple of hours, then take a break and think about the next part of the story you want to write. Write the story one piece at a time till you complete it and don't be afraid to change a part even after you've written it.
Hope that helps!

[The_PG]

Your car is where you left it Now to your other question... I had this same problem when I first started writing! I would have an idea, write part of it and then not finish the story and move on to something else without finishing it. Well I still do that once in a while
My advice would be to set aside the story you completed for now and work on another project. Pic an idea for a story you really want to and think on it for a couple of weeks without writing. Once you feel like the story is about to explode out of your head sit down and write for a couple of hours, then take a break and think about the next part of the story you want to write. Write the story one piece at a time till you complete it and don't be afraid to change a part even after you've written it.
Hope that helps!

I will certainly try this, it looks like it may help because that seems to be exactly what I did for the story i did actually complete. It was based off an RP I did with someone, and I went ahead with the storyline because it was bursting out of my brain onto the keyboard. I guess letting the anticipation and thought of writing something needs to be big enough to overcome my typical lazy attitude, lol.

Do you think me being such an avid Role Player might have something to do with me not coming back to story? In a Role Play once you write your part, then the other writer has to write their's before you continue the storyline, so it's always constantly bouncing two or more characters off each other as you proceed through the story. Maybe since the story hasn't gone anywhere from the last time i wrote it is a deterrent, I don't know if there is away around that though, because I do love Role Playing so much...

[somedude]

I don't think being an avid RPer is your problem! Though I do see where you'd get used to working off of another person's posts for inspiration.  I've done quite a few RPs myself and find it often harder to stay motivated on those than stories. Writing stories to completion is a combination of inspiration and determination...get inspired and then stay determined to you finish it!

[Lois]

Thanks SD, very good advice.

I've started a new story and went back to it again today - was not inspired.  But then thought about the next part on the way home.  Now it's bursting out of my head - no wait, that's the guys - it's cumming in torrents from the puss!

[somedude]

Well good for you Emily...Anyone else got a writing question?

[Dudester]

Anyone else got a writing question?

For the most part, I write Lolita stories because this is the genre I prefer most. I've had stories published at several sites, but I would like to reach a larger audience. My feedback on these stories have been about 99% positive (my stories mostly involve romance, not-I took advantage of her because I could).

Anyway, most sites shy away from this stuff, and most Lolita stories are poorly constructed, or seem to have the lonely dad-curious/sympathetic daughter format, so I understand the reluctance, but, any advice?

[Circ]

I personally use OpenOffice as my writing software. Its completely free, and extremely useful. I haven't been able to teach it how to make a decent sandwich yet; but it can do just about everything else.

http://www.openoffice.org/

If you are looking for a free program for writing, spell-checking & all the other stuff that writers need, you could do a whole lot worse than OpenOffice.


If you need help with punctuation, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuation
That site will describe how to use just about every punctuation mark known to man.

If anyone else knows of any useful programs or websites helpful to writers, feel free to share them.

Its kind of ironic that I am the mod of this section, beings how I suck at English.

[AvatarofTruth]

I like Jarte. It's not nearly as good as Open Office, in fact it's more like wordpad, but what I like about it is you can change the background color. I like writing in the dark, which is hard if you're a human, so I switch the page to black with green text.

I think the best way to get better at writing is to read a lot (and practice writing of course). My writing's not that great, so I maybe wrong about this. That said, the Gutenberg project is great for old books that are in public domain, and eTextReader is a free program that takes a Gutenberg file and puts it in book form (with two pages that you can 'flip') which makes reading it on your compy much easier.

I've heard AbiWord is pretty good, but I've never tried it.

[Grm]

Abiword is good, I have used it a lot over the years and of course Google has a good selection of on line tools including a word processor and on line storage. Another useful tool for writers is any good thesaurus, such as http://thesaurus.reference.com/. Mozilla Firefox spell check is a must have.

[Ibea Fox]

As I said in a different post, what I need is a GOOD grammar and punctuation checker. 

MS Word sucks and I feel bad sending repetitive stupid errors to my proofers.  Proofers are too valuable of a resource to piss away on missing commas and sentence fragments. 

I’m at the point where I’m going to have to name my proofer as a co-author, because all of the corrections they make (One suggested I go back to school and take a class on punctuation – he recommended a 2nd grade class, because 3rd graders would laugh at my mistakes too much)

Any suggestions on good software that will help?

[Grm]

Abi Word does check your grammar, but I find reading it out loud helps, but this might not work if your general grammar sucks. I do have a fall back, my GF is a wizard at English. I must say my spelling has improved over the years, with writing short sex stories and using message boards like ours.

[Dreamer1969]

well a text to speech program helps a bit. have it read the story back to you

[cleanfun4all]

I know this is a somewhat old thread, but I happened across it while having a look around.

Personally, I use and actually like MS Word. It does everything I need to do and it's a piece of software that I'm quite familiar with.

I've used Open Office a bit and in all honesty, it would probably be find for what I do, but I see no reason to learn new software when what I have works just fine.

As for spelling and grammar, Word does in fact check both, but software can only do so much to help the helpless.

If you say spell, won't as want, there's not a spellchecker on the planet that is going to catch it. A grammar checker might, depending on the context, but I've seen a grammar check miss obvious errors and I've also had grammar checkers tell me something was wrong when it wasn't.

Avatar is right about the best way to learn. You learn to write good English, or any other language, by reading well written books in that language.

Also, in the case of English, buy and actually read a copy of Stunk and White.

[celebrity]

Once I've finished a novel-length yarn, I have trouble going-back to second-draught it.  I'm intimidated by my own style and construction.  Sure, I can edit for grammar, etc., but constantly recapturing flow, is where I bog-down.

The one thing my writing-profs never taught:  Never Re-read Your Own Stuff. 

[Circ]

English Grammar & Mechanics.

[Bifunlady]

I use a voice program to write some of my stories sometimes while driving in the car. This program will work if you don't have windows 7. I use xp which I like. It is on sale now, I paid 95 for mine. Works great for me.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Nuance-Communications-Inc-A309A-G01-10-0-NaturallySpeaking/dp/B001B5J7T8/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top