Anyone?

I have 6 outlines of stories, but I don't know anything about the process. Anyone ever done it?

DO I have a better chance writing scripts, or books?

how long is too long?

any help will help.

i second this question... i started writing a book on impulse, i'd like to know what to do with it when i'm done

Typically your local college or Jr. College will have a seasonal magazine in which local authors are published. If this route does not seem attractive (as you may have to be a current student, some colleges are different), try submitting your work to The Sun: an excellent magazine for independent writers, photographers, and poets.

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/

-Best of luck

I wrote a book...well, I have 40 pages left to write (I've had 180 pages done for 6 months). I need to finish and attempt publication.

Best part: the title comes from a Henry Rollins spoken word, and is used with Hank's permission.

cool, has he read part of it already?

in 11th grade we had to write a book aimed towards youngsters


i did mine on how to teach kids the ABC's. i had it rhyme and i even did the illustrations. it was fun

Only a page, just so he could catch the style and give the title a yay or nay.

But it's still awesome.

That does indeed rock.

YOU ARE A LIAR!!!!!

Sorry, man I just couldn't resist the irony. That's cool man.

the dedication should be :

to my dear mom, who never flinched when she saw me balls deep in the homeland, thanks

Just start writing it. You can always go back and clean up your prose later on, which you will UNDOUBTEDLY do. I've spoken to several novelists, and I took a workshop last summer with (name dropping alert) BK Loren, who had to do no less than seventy rewrites to her first novel, The Way of the River.

I've written two novels now, with another one well on its way, plus countless short stories. I finally got published this year, only it was in a friend's lit zine and I doubt anyone read it since we only had 50 issues printed that ended up going to family, friends, and the other contributors, and they're all probably buried among Reader's Digests and Maxims on top of toilets citywide.

Don't worry about whether or not it's "good enough." That is the greatest stumbling block you'll ever hit, and you'll just keep rewriting and rewriting without letting anyone give you some criticism on it, and eventually you'll irreversably lose the point you were trying to make under too many words and other ideas, speaking from experience.

Don't worry about length. When it's done, you'll just know it.

Scriptwriting is a beast. If you can carry a story forward using almost exclusively dialogue, then you're awesome. But, as this post has likely proved, I take a long time to explain things, so novels are usually the best way to go for me. I like my dialogue writing, but scriptwriting just ends up being too much for me. I'll keep rolling along with it until the characters speak as if they walked out of a Kevin Smith movie, and nobody really talks like that.

Do check out your local colleges. I go every year to the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and I absolutely love it. You'll meet writers from all over the world, and pick up something along the way. It's great for me, since I live in Iowa and went to the University of Iowa, who have the oldest writing program in America. One of your state or private colleges should have something similar.

Finally, you should pick up and read Poets & Writers. It'll be at your local Barnes & Noble, so go ahead and thumb through it. In that link, there's also some markets, which are publishers looking for a particular type of story. They'll lay out the desired length (rarely more than 7,500 words), genre, and what they pay per word. It won't be much, and few have ever been able to survive on short stories alone. But they're excellent resume builders, especially if you manage to get into the New Yorker. Sports Illustrated pays the best of any periodical, which goes a long way in explaining why there are so many sportswriters. Best of luck, there. As a writer, you'll have a bright, vibrant future as a starving artist.

Also, try to avoid self-publishers. The best one I've seen is http://www.lulu.com/, who are basically print-on-demand so you don't pay a ton of money for a minimum order of books that won't sell because you have no way of advertising that the book even exists.

I plan on using Lulu to publish the first novel I wrote, mainly for Christmas gifts. You control the rights with them, so you can take it off the site at any time.

Yeah. Then I think of the thousands of dollars that it cost me to acquire some of that knowledge, and how I've learned most of it in the two years since I've graduated.

even if he's the cannon fodder of literature (and i'm not sure that's intended to be an insult), stephen king's on writing provides, among other things, a relatively straightforward explanation of how to become a paid novelist, incl. tips on finding an agent, et cetera. I'm sure it's not the Bible of getting published, but it's a start and an easy read and King's attitude towards the writing process is probably one that will convince you to get on your butt and write some more.

I did too while I was trippin on Shrooms now that I read back it's too much like Siddhartha though.

What is the title, if you don't mind me asking?

Blueprints for the Destruction of the Earth.

I wrote a story about a bear meeting a duck and a fish when I was in 2nd grade. It got published in our elementary school library. One girl checked it out. I ended up banging her when I was older. So it's true: Get Published, Get Laid

i wrote the great gatsby