I'm Alive!

I promise! Life has just gotten in the way a little bit. Oh, and I've been doing some "research". What I mean by that is reading. They say reading is just as important as writing, but I don't really have time for both simultaneously so I have been reading these past few days.

What am I reading? Currently I am reading The List by J.A. Konrath. The book is about people who have a strange tattoo on the bottom of their foot, and they are being killed off one at a time. It's pretty good so far, but I am getting tired around 10 these days so it's even hard to fit that in.

I plan to be writing again by the weekend. Maybe I can power through the rest of The List on Friday. What are you guys reading right now?

It's Friday, Friday!

Its been a long week full of sitting in traffic on my way to work. However, when I'm sitting in my car I am able to think about my story and some of the things that would make it cool. I do a lot of my brainstorming for plot ideas in the car, and I've come up with some good stuff.

I had some original ideas for a scene in which the main character saves a girl, and I had some long drives ahead of me before I would be able to write that scene. Now, the scene is completely different, and it's almost done being written. I have about 1300 words so far, and there will be a good bit more before I'm through.

I may as well make it official that my side project is now my new main project. It's the one I would rather write, and the only one that jumps in to my mind in my highway idea sessions. I'm not really sure how long I want it to be, but I know where I want it to go. It may just make a few additional stops along the way.

Are any of you like that? Do you think about your stories in the car? When you come up with an awesome idea for a new book while thinking about your current book what do you do?

The Male Point Of View

So I enjoyed another #pvpchat on Twitter tonight with some other writers talking about multiple points of view in a story. It kind of devolved to a talk about point of view in general, and that gave me the idea for this blog post.

The point of view for my current side (maybe new main?) project is first person male. I haven't really written first person in a while, but I have been making sure I read some first person every night just to keep things fresh. The genre the book is targeted towards is most commonly done with a female main character, but I didn't want to take that challenge on my first work.

Some good things about this could be that perhaps readers of the genre would think that the viewpoint is fresh, and trust me, I know how guys think. The downside would be that perhaps the readers won't be able to relate to a "real" man, and I may have to lighten him up a bit.

When is it okay to sacrifice things that make a character realistic for things that make a character likable? What if your character is very real, and because of that, no one likes him? First person male could be quite a scary place especially in the mind of a seventeen year old male. Oh no, I've gone and said too much.

Sample Sunday

Today's entry is going to be rather short. Some of my acquaintances have published some shorts for Sample Sunday and I'd like to link them below.

Point Blank

Missing

I think that these are both examples of engaging writing that raises some questions about the story, and makes you want to know more about what happened.

Do you have a short that you want to share? An excerpt from a piece you are writing?

Back In High School

I wrote another scene in my side project today because it was what was in my mind, and I thought the idea was pretty fresh. It's a modern setting, and the first two scenes in the book take place in a high school. It was actually kind of fun to write about the high school experience even though I included only part of one class, and some dialog in the hallway. The class I used was an English class so I had them studying The Crucible.

The scene goes in a bit deeper with one of the main characters that you meet at the end of scene one, and introduces a third main character who the MAIN main character kind of likes. It was actually kind of fun to write the things that go through a guy's head in class when he likes a girl. I'm wondering how many girls would be interested in knowing exactly what it's like in our heads.

I'm trying out a slightly different structure in this project. I have a large list of about forty things that cover the main plot line, but I'm not sticking to it like a rigid outline. The first three things on the list are in the first two scenes, but I'm sure that things that aren't on the list will make their way in as well. I'm going to write what feels natural and right instead of trying to force the characters in to some predetermined sequence that may feel rushed in the end product.

I also have a tentative name fo the project that you may find if you're clever. However, it's not necessarily the name of the book. Just something to keep the project organized.

Distracted

So, I've been distracted today by another idea that I came up with. I wanted to get everything in my head down so I made up a notes sheet. Then I didn't want to stop so I made a big huge generic outline with like 40 points in it. Then I decided to knock out my daily word count on this new side project just to see if it was still going to be interesting after 1000 words.

I liked it. I think I will like writing the next chapters a bit more as the first only really had one character in it, but that's one of the things I like most about this new idea. The character scope is much smaller, the setting is way smaller, and it's in a modern era. It may actually be easier to do this first than my original project. I will have to knock out a few more words to see if this new thing starts shaping in to something cool.

In other news, I'm reading Switched by Amanda Hocking on my Kindle just to see what all the fuss is about. It's about a girl who is really a troll (or trylle?) and she was switched with a human baby when she was born. It should be an interesting read, and you know what they say, you can't become a better writer without reading. Amanda's formula clearly works so maybe I will learn something.

Anyways, do you ever get distracted and start working on a second project simultaneously?

Fight Scenes!

Everyone loves when their book opens with an awesome fight scene. You know what's cooler than reading a fight scene though? Writing one! In the scenes I was working on this morning before work I made it through some of the pre-conflict, and started the battle, but I ran out of time and had to start work.

Man do I want to finish that fight scene! I can already tell that these are going to be places that I go back over with a fine tooth comb in my revisions. I want them to be perfect. I want the reader to feel exactly what a character feels when they are fighting.

I still think that this chapter will be able to hit 5,000 words. It's sitting at around 2,200 right now, and the fighting has really just begun. I will probably work on it later even though I have already hit my daily writing goal. It should be an interesting chapter

What makes a fight scene cool to you? Lots of cool ways in which people die? Being able to envision the scene perfectly?

Dramatic Reconception

Last night I was messing around on Twitter, and I drilled down on the hash tag #amwriting, and I noticed that there was a discussion about world building in writing going on at #pvpchat. I participated for a while, and it inspired me to really expand the scope of my world. However, with everything that I wanted to add to the world some of my original concept started to feel either out of place, or just forced.

This concept that I was talking about was some modern urban aspects that I wanted to include. Modern cities, cars, technology, but the more that I thought about it the more difficult it seemed to create an epic fantasy in a modern world. Everything about the modern world is geared towards making things easier so how interesting could a journey to a coastal town be if you can drive there?

I opened a blank Google Docs document, and started hashing things out. Races, Factions, Locations, Villains, and Magic. I am drawing on some classic fantasy races, but maybe giving their origin a unique spin. I am also adding a race that I created. I also want to have multiple villains each with their own agenda, but of course there is a main villain. Obviously everything is not planned out yet, and I still don't know for sure how all of their customs or politics will work, but that's okay because I want the reader to learn about them when the main characters do, and that means I don't have to know about them yet.

I started going in to some light detail about the races and the places, and decided on a similar, yet re-envisioned, opening for my book, and immediately set to outlining it. What I ended up with was probably the largest and most detailed chapter outline I have come up with yet. It speculates that there will be 6 scenes, and I would not be surprised to see the length of this chapter extend to 5,000 words or more.

I am going to start writing on this new beginning later tonight, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Spontaneous Genius

I talked about my outline yesterday, but late last night I decided that I wanted to tell part of the story from another perspective so that respective storyline is done some justice. Essentially one of my characters will split off and will go through some things that are worth writing about as a chapter, and not as an afterthought.

What this lead to was me fleshing the outline out a lot better. I have the best feel for what is going to happen in the book now than I have, and I actually settled on a title, though I won't be sharing it just yet. :)

So, inspired by my newly polished outline I began working on the first scene of what would be chapter 7 (8 if you count the prologue). I had intended it to be sort of a short little 500 word scene or so to wrap one thing up and move on. However, as I started writing the conflict in the scene I realized that I had painted some of my characters in to an interesting situation that I hadn't counted on during the outlining process. This situation let me decide whether I wanted one of the characters to save the other two, or if I wanted one of the two to kind of evolve temporarily to handle the current situation. I chose to have one of my characters evolve because I think that it adds an interesting topic to think about to the story.

I just wanted to share that I thought it was cool how no matter how detailed I make my outlines the really genius stuff that I do happens when I'm writing the story. I had no idea that some of the stuff in my scene would be there when I started writing it, but it's there now, and I love it.

More Outlining!

So, I finished up my sixth chapter today with a nice burst of 1,341 words. It's looking like my chapters are going to be roughly 2,500 words. I've been working a bit on the lore that I want to incorporate in to the story, and I've done some detailed outlining of the next few chapters. I have some very limited detailing of the late chapters, but I haven't fleshed them out yet as things can change.

I know where I want the book to end, and to me that's kind of the most logical place for it to end. I need to just fill the gap between the beginning and the end, and I come up with interesting things to happen to the characters from time to time, but it's not completely done being designed yet.

I'm also toying with the idea of using multiple points of view in the sense that one chapter is continuing one storyline, while the next continues another, and it alternates back and forth until those story lines converge back together.

I also came up with a pretty cool title idea, and a cover art idea, but that will come much later. My plan is to look back over the completed work, and then decide what I think the title should be. It's also interesting that I have ideas about what I want to have happen in the second book, but I have to kind of just bottle them up and save them for later.

Hopefully tonight I can get a rough idea of what major plot points I would want in the next book so I know how to finish this book. I'm considering having one of the characters split off from the group, and to alternate with their storyline for part of the end of the book. Nothing is finalized yet, though.

Twelve Days

It's been twelve days since I decided to actually buckle down and start writing a book with the sub-goal of writing 1,000 words a day. I have written over 14,000 words, and I'd like to finish the chapter I am working on today.

Writing 14,000 words may seem like a lot, but when it's distributed out across multiple days it's really not that daunting of a task. No one can eat an entire cow in one sitting, but if you break it down in to burgers and steaks the cow will be gone before you know it.

I started thinking about other things that I will need to do even after my book is finished. I will need to format it for eReaders, and it will need editing. It will also need good cover art, which I can't create on my own, and an excellent description to accompany it's listing on Amazon/B&N/Smashwords. Even after it's published it will need advertising. It's a lot of additional work, but if I break it down in to smaller pieces I'm sure I will finish it before I know it.

We'll have to see how big of an advertising platform I can turn Facebook in to. :)

Names, Names, and More Names!

Anyone who has ever written a story, or a book can tell you that coming up with names can be a very lengthy process. You want to make sure that you get the names just right, and you don't want them to be very common names. The Adventures of John Smith is not nearly as exciting as The Adventures of Drake Daring. Names carry a lot of power. You want your reader to believe that the character's name reflects their personality and behavior.

Some stories are easier to tell than others. They might take place in one location with only a handful of characters. Some stories have tons of characters, and take place in a fully created world full of cities, lakes, and forests that each need their own unique, yet cool, names.

I spent a lot of time the other day coming up with names of locations that will be in my book. I came up with eleven names for various locales, and I have already named at least five characters with many more to go. I'm wondering how far I am going to get in telling my story before I stop and decide that it's time for book two to start.

It's an interesting experience creating a world from scratch. You don't want the names of the places to sound stupid, and since they're fictitious locations you need to describe them vividly to the reader. However, the payoff is that you get to create anything you want to. you have the freedom to create a floating city if you want to.

For my character names I randomly generate sets of obscure names, and I take a look at hundreds of names until I think I find a first and last name that I like. I don't like making up names like Tirion, I want them to sound real. For location names I have looked at names of places, and browsed random lists, and tried to pick and choose the best components, and reassemble them.

How do you come up with your names?

Inspiration

A lot of people who hear that I am writing a book ask me where my inspiration came from? First off, I think that this is two questions in one.

Where did my inspiration to write a book come from?

I had always wanted to write a book, but I never did as a product of laziness, and the fact that even if I wrote it I would not have any means to publish it for public consumption. I figured that as cool as it would be to write a book I would still want people to read it, and if they couldn't I viewed it as a waste of time.

We live in an age of technology, and now we have the means to buy a book, and have it delivered instantly without having to leave the comfort of our favorite reading corner. I am of course talking about eReaders, namely the Kindle. Amazon, much like Apple offers with iTunes or their App Store, offers authors a way to electronically publish their own books and keep 35%-70% of the royalties. When I finish my book I intend to publish it for between $.99 - $2.99 on all eReader formats.

Where did the inspiration for my story come from?

I think that this is a slightly more complicated question. I look at inspiration as the sum of everything you have experienced in life. This creates a large pool of creative basis for you to draw on. I think that there are two main ways to draw an idea from this pool.

First, you can simply focus on a topic that you find very interesting, and come up with a single thought. This thought will function as the seed that you grow in to your story.

The other method is to sleep, and let your sub-conscious create stories for you in the form of dreams. If you have a particularly interesting or entertaining dream, you can use it as the seed for your story.

For my story I thought of a cool theme for the story, and I also thought about the ending, and I built from there. I thought about a cool way to start the book, and have taken it one chapter at a time since.

For my brother's book he told me that he had a dream, and a particular line in that dream served as the basis which he grew his story from.

Everyone's experiences are different, and I think that's why even if you told 30 people to write a book about an alien that was raised as a human only one of them would write Superman.

10,000 Words Down!

So, this morning I came in to work early like I usually do to avoid the bulk of the Atlanta traffic, and I set to finishing the chapter I was working on. A little over a thousand words later I had finished the chapter, and passed the 10,000 word barrier. If anything means that it's real I think that writing 10,000 words does.

So there are some pretty good characters being introduced. I might take some time tonight and consolidate some facts about them in to my character sheets. I would like to take my main three characters, and kind of plot out where they are at the beginning of the book, and where they will end up at the end of the book. What will their emotional journey be like? What events will be significant to them? How will these events change them?

Does anyone else have experience with character sketches that could offer some advice on how to plan characters so that they grow throughout a book? I'm sure my plan will be fine, but experience would be nice too.

A Writing Style Evolution

So, as I said yesterday, I was going to reread the first chapter of my favorite book. Well, I did, and after writing a couple of chapters of a book, and knowing what goes through your head while writing, I was able to read that excerpt in a new light.

They vivid way in which Jordan describes his worlds allows you to picture every detail of the scene in your mind. I payed attention to the way that he incorporated details of the scenes in to the dialogue sequences without really interrupting the flow of the dialog.

He was going to need that anger now more than ever. Elissa was being dragged to the other room, and there he was bound to a chair, and handcuffed. The severity of the situation began to set in with Logan, and he started struggling to escape his bonds. The more he thought about Elissa the more he struggled, and he eventually got so carried away that the fallen chair rocked back and forth so violently that the taught rope that bound him dug deep in to the gash on his middle like a knife cutting through flesh. Logan could not feel the pain; there was no time for it.

This is a paragraph from the scene that I wrote today. As I said, my scenes are like logical divisions of my chapters. The setting does not necessarily change, but something slightly different will take place after a scene change. To put things in perspective a scene that I was writing before had roughly 500 words. The scene that I wrote today had 1,484. I was consciously trying to consider if I could see the scene in my head, and I could, so I thought that it was a marked improvement after studying the writing of one author for one night.

You may like or dislike the piece of my book that I decided to share with you. It doesn't much matter to me. I wanted to include a small sample of writing style from today without divulging too much information about the book. Hopefully this will help satisfy those of you who don't actually believe that I'm working on a novel. :)

An Outline and More Words!

So I finally sat down and made an outline. It's not a definitive list, but I would like to implement everything in the outline in the story. The outline tentatively projected the book to be twenty-five chapters.

I'm not sure how easily I will be able to hit 100,000 words with twenty-five chapters. Perhaps my writing needs to improve. Perhaps I am not telling the story well enough. Perhaps I am telling the story fine, and shouldn't force the word count.

If the world was perfect, and everything went my way, this book would be the first in a group of three. I just hope I don't end up writing a short book in my quest to make a series of three books.

I had the idea that I could reread the first chapter in my favorite book The Eye of the World. I hope that it will inspire me to write better, and perhaps the stories I tell from here on out will be even better.

Heat of the Moment

So yesterday I mentioned that I realized my story would go better if I inserted a chapter break earlier than I had originally intended. I went ahead and wrote Chapter Three today, and then realized that the two scenes I wrote for Chapter Three would fit better as the end of Chapter Two.

So now I have a prologue, and two chapters totaling roughly 7,100 words. It's interesting how fast you can progress writing 1,000 words a day. That's roughly three months to knock out a 100,000 word novel. In the world of technology that we live in today you could publish three or four books a year. If you spend more than a couple of hours a day writing you could publish even more. This is of course assuming you outsource some of the editing.

So if some of you were playing around with an idea in your head just start writing 1,000 words a day. If I can do it I'm pretty sure anyone can.

Revising Ideas While You Write

Does anyone else do that? I started writing tonight with the plan of writing two out of three scenes for Chapter Two. By the time I had finished writing the second scene I decided that it seemed to make more sense ending the chapter there. So I made a new folder called Chapter Three and moved my third scene there, and added a second scene to end the Chapter. If all goes according to plan I should be able to write Chapter Three in it's entirety tomorrow.

I know some people are highly organized. I would consider myself highly organized, but also somewhat chaotic. I guess what I mean by that is that I don't have everything planned out, but the stuff that I do have planned out is organized. Other people, like my brother, just sit down and start writing with no written down plan of what is going to happen. Myself, I am a bit different. I have a general idea of what I want to happen in the last chapter of the book, but other than that I don't have much. I only think one chapter ahead. I plan out what the chapter is going to accomplish, and then I write it. After that I plan what the next chapter is going to include, and then I write that.

If there was someone reading my story as I wrote it they would have about as much of a clue as to what's going to happen next as I do. Maybe it's better that way. I'm sure that there are some people out there who plan every single aspect of their book before they write it, but that's not me. I don't think I could come up with that much creative material without being involved in the actual story as it unfolds.

I think that's where the magic happens. When you're busy writing, and you stray from the mold. You do something unexpected. Something even you didn't anticipate when you started writing that day.

What about you guys? Do you come up with your best stuff before you start writing, or while you're writing?

Scrivener Helps Me Organize My Thoughts

That's right, I said Scrivener. It's not a made up word, it's actually a rather neat piece of software. It lets you organize your literary thoughts much the same way as a programmer might organize their code. Here's a screenshot of the outline view:

This is what I was talking about when I mentioned that I broke my chapters down in to scenes. The scenes have a description field that you can state your basic goal of the scene, and a notes field where you can jot down some notes about the scene if you aren't planning on writing the scene right then, or if you just want to make sure you don't forget an idea. I use this feature to framework a chapter before I write it. 

For example, I knew what I wanted to accomplish throughout my first chapter. I was able to logically divide the chapter in to three parts which I created in Scrivener as scenes. I wrote down brief summaries about what would happen in each scene. I did the frameworking for chapter one while I was still writing the prologue.

There are other great features that I utilize. You can save character bio sheets for your main characters so that you can always remember what color eyes your characters have. You can do the same thing for locations, and you can even simply create a new folder and add any other items that you might want to keep track of for future reference.

Another neat feature that I have been using is the name generator:

As you can see the name generator is highly configurable. You can specify gender, obscurity, and even prefer names specific to a region or religion. I have found this tool to be immensely useful as it presents me with a list of names that I can pick and choose first and last names from which lets me get back to writing instead of fretting over what someones name should be. I came up with my main character's name on my own, and I have to say that I think I like his love interest's randomly generated name more.

This is another feature that I like a lot. You can configure a certain amount of words that will be your goal for a writing session. For me I use session as a day, but I reset my counter earlier after I wrote the first two scenes of Chapter One. I just finished Chapter One so you can see that my third scene is 688 words long, and that the combination of the prologue and the first chapter is roughly 5,000 words. It's a nice tool that allow's you to see your progress towards hitting your writing goals for the day.

There's a ton of other great features that I haven't even made use of yet such as converting your project in to any of the ebook formats. Don't just take my word for it, thought. Check out the free trial on their website for yourself: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

The Real Chapter One is Shaping Up

So I got home from the gym, and decided that I wanted to work on Chapter One. My fiance had to work today so I figured I ought to take advantage of the silence while I could, and once I started going I started really going.

It's a little bit difficult to take an action scene that you can see in your head, and put it in to words, but it's also pretty fun. If the finished product allows the reader to experience the scene the way that it unfolded in my head then I have done my job. I really think that I achieved that with my first scene in Chapter One, probably more so than the action in the prologue. I plan to go back and touch up the prologue, but I am going to save that for the first revision when I am done. I want to knock out the whole book in it's most raw and visceral form before I fret over the details. I would rather have four pretty good chapters that need a little work then one really good chapter that's completely finished.

Word count so far today is 1,330. That's the most so far. I thought about writing the last scene in the chapter, but I already have notes on what I want to happen in it so it's not as though I am going to forget what I wanted to do. Besides, it's nice to take a break every once in a while, and my fiance will be home soon. It also frees me up to ask you guys a question.

What is it about a book that makes you not want to put it down? We've all been there where you just can't seem to stop reading a book, and before you know it it's 4 am and you've read half of the book. Leave a comment with your answer.

First Chapter Done!

Well, I should say that the prologue is done. I sat down and banged out the last two scenes, and that ended up totaling around 1,200 words bringing the length of the prologue to just under 3,000 words. I'd say that's pretty decent for a chapter with a good bit of set up intermixed with action.

I had originally planned on having seven scenes in my prologue, but once I got to the fifth scene I didn't think it made sense to have all seven. One of the scenes was repetitive, and the other was history that is mostly irrelevant to the story.

I have not read through the prologue yet to see if the flow is good, or if it makes sense. I want to keep moving forward with the story while the thoughts are fresh in my mind. When presented with the options of beginning Chapter One, and going over the prologue with a fine tooth comb, I am more excited by the first option.

I really can't wait to start writing the first chapter. It should have a good bit of action in it, and it's the first chapter with the main character in it. Currently I have it set up to be three scenes so it will probably come in between 1,500 and 2,000 words. I don't know what I'm going to do for Chapter Two yet, but I will probably think of something by Monday which is likely when I will have the real Chapter One finished by.

I had an idea for a scene that was in my prologue, and that helped me create the rest of the prologue as I was writing. As I wrote the prologue I came up with an idea for the first chapter. I will likely know vaguely what I want to do in the second chapter while I am writing the first one, but I do not know now. You don't have to know what your entire story is going to be in order to start writing. Just take it one step at a time, and before you know it you've taken a lot of steps, and have written a lot of pages.

Google Docs to the Rescue!

So I was sitting at work earlier, and a really great idea for the first chapter of my book came to mind. The problem is that my work is all on my MacBook Pro which is at home. I considered just putting the file on a flash drive, but my flash drive is encrypted in a way Mac doesn't understand, and if I want to update those chapter thoughts at some point I have to transfer the file again.

After a minute or two I realized I could just create a Google Document. I'm sure most of you know this, but in case you don't, if you have a Google account you have access to their documents portal (docs.google.com). This document is saved to a location that you can get to anywhere as long as you're logged in to a Google account. All I have to do to copy my notes in to Scrivener later is to open the web document on my laptop which is already logged in to Google.

For those of you that didn't know about this Google portal it can come in very handy.

Round One, Fight!

So, yesterday was more of a trial run than anything. As I said, my brother suggested writing at least 1,000 words a day, and yesterday I only managed 583. Now, that might seem like a lot to you if it's been a while since you've written anything. I thought that when I set a goal of 500 words it would take me a while to come up with 500 words to type.

Well, today I followed his advice and increased my daily goal to 1,000 words. I am happy to announce that  in less than two hours I typed up 1,142 words, and completed two additional scenes in the prologue of my book. In addition I wrote my first dialog between characters.

Some of you may be wondering what I mean when I say that I wrote two scenes. Well, the approach I am taking to writing this is what I would consider highly organized. In addition to the three scenes that I have written so far I also have four more scenes with descriptions and notes that are going to make up the remainder of the prologue. I also have numerous character sheets full of information about the characters in the story so far. I also have other information that will be useful as a reference for writing the later chapters of the book.

Back to the scenes though. I am breaking down every chapter in to a collection of scenes. First, I isolate what I want to be the main goal of the chapter. Once I know the main direction that the chapter is going to take I can begin to plan out the scenes. Generally I know where I want to start and end the chapter so I add scenes for those with brief descriptions. Next, I figure out how I want to take the reader from the start to the end of the chapter. I take them there by adding additional scenes in between. When the general flow of my scenes is sound I begin to flesh the main content of the scenes out in my scene notes. After that I start writing.

I actually have seven scenes in my first chapter, which is going to function as a prologue. Each scene has a generic one line description. Something that you would say to someone else to give them the gist of the scene without any of the details. Each scene also has notes. Maybe I want someone to die in the scene. If I think of a really cool way for them to die then I jot it down in the scene notes. This is especially important to me if I haven't begun work on that scene, and might not for a day or so.

So that basically sums up my current method of organizing my work, and concludes the end of my first 1,000 word day. It really doesn't take that long to write 1,000 words. If I can do it, you can too.

Ben Is Writing

I have long thought that I could create a compelling video game that people would want to play. Of course, I'm sure that many people who enjoy gaming as much as I do feel similarly, but nonetheless I though my story would be special. However, video game companies aren't exactly combing through their players looking for the next great idea. Realistically no video game executive will likely ever read anything that I write.

Until now that has been keeping me from organizing my thoughts. I often think about what my story would be about, but never do anything with it. My brother, Clay, recently divulged to me that he had written a novel last year. I was surprised at first, but then he went on to explain that by writing a mere 1,000 words a day it took him only a couple of months to turn out almost 100,000 words of text. This was all exciting, but the original problem still existed: how would anyone ever read what you wrote?

Welcome to the year 2011 where spaceships take you to and from work, your lunch is teleported to your desk, and books can be purchased and read on a magical tablet. Amazon, and various other websites, now have the means to electronically distribute books. With Amazon's Kindle fast becoming a household name it is now realistic to believe that you can write a book, and people will read it. Under Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program you can submit your text as soon as it is ready for consumption, and that's not all you can even earn 35% to 70% royalties off of the sales!

So here I am, finally with a median that can get my story out. I'm taking it one step at a time. As a software developer I am taking a very developmental approach to writing, and that is I am creating chapters, and describing what main goals and events that I want to take place in them. I am then dividing the chapter in to various scenes that also come complete with their own descriptions.

Last night I decided to take a break from the overall design of the book in order to flesh out the first scene in the book. I had a tentative goal of writing 500 words last night, and boy that came fast. I knew where I wanted to start and end the scene, and by the time I had written everything in between I had hit almost 600 words. To anyone like me, who hasn't written before, 500 words sounded like a lot. My brother wrote 1,000 or more words a day! However, after doing it once I realize that it is definitely an attainable goal.

To anyone out there like me, with a story to tell, there's now a way to get it front of people. The only thing stopping you now is yourself.