Fiction

One of my resolutions this year is to do more fiction writing.

I have some friends who regularly write short stories and even publish novels online and ever since then I've been considering doing the same. Hopefully one of my stories will be published with a group of others next year too. I also hope to submit something to Rachel's Haven's own anthology series "A Little Bit of Girl Time" which is reaching its third volume soon. The first two are available now as e-books from Amazon along with the individual stories. I have meant to submit something before but time and other work has previously been an issue.

Amazon link for A Little Bit of Girl Time

When I was writing the first story I mentioned (apologies if I'm sounding a bit cagey about this, by the way) I found it a little hard to get back into the groove since I have been writing non-fiction things like blog posts, and reviews for various websites. It's funny that I never even considered all the captions (at least 200+ now) I wrote as fiction when of course they are. Not long enough to be short stories they are kind of micro-stories I guess and although they are on a similar theme, there are still many, many, many things you can do with it and I'm very proud of all the work I've done.

When I was younger I used to write fan fiction mainly. Now, most people think that fan fiction is just writing about various characters hooking up and to be honest that's what a lot of it is but I've read many wonderful stories by people wanting to write about adventures set in their favourite universes. I would recommend fan fiction to anyone as a good way to get into writing. Straight away you have a set-up and characters right in front of you. The hardest thing to do can be to stare at a blank sheet, or screen, in front of you without the foggiest about how to start. With fan fiction, you get to play in someone else's sandbox for a bit with their ready-made characters. You get to make up your own stories involving them, dialogue and bring in your own characters. There are various websites you can publish these on such as fanfiction.net. It's a good way of building confidence and once you have that then you can go on to cultivate your own ideas and characters.

Of course, this is not for everyone. I've spoken to people about this before and they've just not been able to do it. Indeed, it can feel odd writing in someone else's universe with familiar characters. It can make you feel a bit like a charlatan and not a proper writer. I know, I've felt all these things but yet I would still recommend it to writers starting out to sharpen up their confidence.

Many years ago I also had an idea for a series of books. Sadly, although I had the concept I didn't have any solid plot ideas so I've remained stuck ever since and I've further been soured on it by finding that a similar idea has already been used. However though it could still happen. I've always wanted to write a novel and in this this shiny new digital ago of e-books that is more of a possibility than it was 10 years ago.

Hopefully, this will be something good for me this year.