Who are you?

[jParker]

Hey gang, looks like I'm the newest member of RE. Name's Jake and I've only been writing for about a year or so--between work and university I don't get as much time to do it as I'd like. Honestly, I don't much care about being published; I just enjoy writing and want to get better at, as well as helping aspiring authors succeed. 

 

Favorite authors: hands down Rothfuss, followed by Peter S. Beagle, Karen Traviss, Brian Hooker and Chaucer. Honestly, does Sanderson even need mentioning at this point?

[edonil]

Republic Commando era Karen Traviss, or later?

[jParker]

Both. I honestly fell in love with her during Legacy of the Force, then branched out to her Republic Commando and Wess'har stuff. 

[TracerTK]

Hi everyone, I'm Abraham and I started writing when I was young but never finished a whole lot. I like writing because I can picture a scene in my mind easily, however it's a lot harder to expand that scene such as are there trees or buildings and what they would look like. I ended up hearing about writing excuses from a co-worker and really enjoyed the content that was being presented so I joined the forum.

 

I'm currently at about 5k of my first novel and am going to continue.

 

My two favorite books are Imajica by Clive Barker and Live Free of Die by Troy Rising and last but not least are the EVE Online novel series by Tony Gonzales. (The book are more interesting if you play the game)

[Mark]

My name's Mark, I'm a secondary student in Ireland. I started writing about seven or eight months ago, mostly so I didn't forget all the ideas buzzing about in my head. I've gotten absolutely no teaching in writing, except for some basic creative writing in primary school that pretty much came down to, "be yourself, you're s special little snowflake'. So yes, I'm in dire need of you guys' help. 

 

I was nearly 100k words into my first book when I realised I was writing utter garbage. I lost faith and energy, so I decided to start afresh with another. I'm now just a bit over 32k words in, it's slow going due to exams and school, but I'm getting there. I'm off for three months today, and I hope to have over 100k words finished by the end of summer (August - not the season itself) I was recommended here by a member of the /r/fantasywriters subreddit on reddit, after I made a post that showed just how much I have yet to learn. I look forward to being critiqued and critiquing, though I don't feel like I'm entirely qualified for the latter. 

 

Two favourite books... ugh. So many choices, but I'd probably go with A Storm Of Swords and Magician. I've only recently gotten into Brandon Sanderson, so he might be a contender. 

 

Anyway, thanks for accepting me into the family, I hope I work out here. 

[Robinski]

Hi Mark, welcome to Reading Excuses.

 

From what you say, I think you are as well qualified to critique as anyone else on here, i.e. you are a reader, a writer and you've willing to put your own work out there, and to contribute to the forum.

 

As well as weekly submissions, there is also an Alpha Readers thread here, so if you want to put your first novel up, I'm sure you're more than welcome to. I for one would be happy to read it.

 

I'm a bit like you in some respects, I started writing my first novel about 25 years ago (not like you if you're at school!!), it took 10 years to finish the first draft and I re-wrote it 5 years ago because I knew the first draft was not good enough. I went from 127k to 225k words and it's still not good enough, because I know a lot more now. But that's okay, because it's important to me personally, I like it, and it's all about learning.

 

Someone said (repeated by Writing Excuses) that you have to write a million words before you get to know what you're doing. So, the important thing it to keep writing, which you are doing, by the sound of it.

 

I should say that I don't work here, I'm just a keen contributor with the big mouth (keyboard).

 

Submissions have been a bit light in the last couple of weeks, so I bet if you posted a request on the Submissions thread, Silk (our kind and generous moderator) would let you submit without having critiqued yet.

Edited May 31, 2014 by Robinski

[Dysphoric Kitten]

My story... It is a bit long, so I will, excusably I hope, cut away some of the heavier, longer parts.

I am an 18 year old Israeli. I mostly write because I need an outlet, which means most of what I write alludes to my life, and that includes Israeli culture and my complete, heavy backstory. I invite you all to try and figure it out, if you are interested in this sort of puzzle mysteries. I am willing to talk about it, too.

For some reason, I write mainly short works, although there is a book tumbling somewhere in my head.

My shortened backstory, by the way, is:

I was always bad socially, I wanted to get better, especially since my school is a K-12. Although I improved, I am still somewhat of a problem in that regard. I have graduated, and am to draft into the army this year.

[jParker]

Welcome Tal. I can't speak for everyone, but I'm always down for a puzzle. As for writing as therapy, I'm afraid I can't attest to that but it seems to have worked pretty well for Stephen King, so...maybe?

[Dysphoric Kitten]

I'll throw you a bone then.

I do not write as therapy exactly, therapy I do more consistently and professionally. Writing is a multipurpose tool for me:

A. Channelling emotions in and out of me (I can either draw more of an emotion or discard part of it when writing).

B. Making more sense of a situation, event, or facet of my life.

C. Discovering more about myself

D. Finalizing either my opinions or my memories.

[molah]

Hello everyone,

Silk just added me to the email list, so I guess it's my turn to present myself. My name is Helge and I spend my working hours digging in the guts of Windows, telling customers why their machines crashed. I studied computer science, so - as others have stated before - I may be a bit pedantic at times. I hope you'll forgive me.

I appear to have a more or less fixed set of hobbies (writing, drawing, computer games and recently photography), which I cycle through. Usually, I'm totally hot for one of them and have no interest for the others, until I'm not any more. Then it's the turn of the next hobby. So really, I joined Reading Excuses for two main reasons: To help me stay focused and to improve my writing. Of course, it is also great to get to know fellow (hobby) writers who I can share my passion with. I'm German, but I live in Madrid, Spain, so it's not so easy to find people writing in English around here.

I first got in contact with writing in primary school. We used to get small comic strips, of 4 vignettes or so, and we had to invent a story that fit the pictures. I loved it. Later, when I was around 17, writing became more of a way to escape the real world. Having grown up reading lots of fantasy and playing computer games, I found the real world quite boring. I used to daydream a lot and eventually decided to create my own world, full of exciting adventures. I wrote a couple of what I'd call "story fragments" during that time, but also started plotting a full novel. I never got to write it, though. I did a lot of world building and I knew how I wanted the story to start and to end, but I did not know how to fill the middle. I guess I was lacking the tools. (And I guess this is the typical writing project that everyone has, that you will never finish until you're better at writing )
During university and in the years after, writing was not a priority. When I came to Madrid, I first had to learn Spanish and that plus working kept my neurons pretty busy. With writing, I always felt like I have a certain amount of "creative energy" and when I get home after a though day of work I feel like I already burnt through my "fuel" and don't feel very inspired. And I never really got into the habit of writing regularly. I wish to change that now.

Well, sorry for the wall of text. Let me wrap up quickly with my favourite writers/books. It's a tough call, because I always seem to favour writers whose books I have read recently...
I have only read a couple of books so far, but I really like Brandon's works. I only got to know about him when Patrick Rothfuss said that he was jealous at Brandon's throughput. I really loved the "Mistborn" books (have only gotten to read the first 2 yet) and "Steelheart". "Warbreaker" was also nice. I loved what the Writing Excuses crew did with the "Shadows Beneath", but not so much for the storied but for the insights.
I absolutely love Patrick Rothfuss's "The Kingkiller Chronicle"!
"A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R R Martin
"Harry Potter" (Around the time that the 4th movie was released I got interested in the series and started reading the books. I was pleasantly surprised by how well-written they were)
I loved the "Furies of Calderon" by Jim Butcher
"Stardust" and "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
Last Christmas I learned about John Green's "Looking for Alaska". It was heartbreaking and got me on a "John Green trip". I read all of his books except "The fault in our stars". The one I liked best was "Paper Towns". That also got me reading "Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher, which was really emotional and heart-wrenching.
"The Magicians" by Lev Grossman
"Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card

Yeah, I have a hard time deciding...

Cheers,
Helge
 

[Robinski]

Welcome to Reading Excuses, Helge, hopefully you will find as much motivation here as I have in the last 18 months or so.

 

People have come and gone from the forum over that period, but there is always someone here to read your work and give (hopefully useful) opinion and comment. I look forard to reading your work and your critiques.

 

I know what you mean about the creative energy, it is definitely a challenge sometimes, but it's as important (I think) to develop work ethic as it is skill. As someone once said, to be a writer, you have to write!

[Lord Juugatsu]

Hi, you can call me Lord or Juugatsu. Most people seem to do the former just because it's the first half there. I'm a mechanical engineer currently living in the States, in Florida. I'm relatively fresh out of college (graduated in 2012, have only been working for 2.5 years). I say 'only' because because most of my fellow engineers are around twice my age, so they've been effectively working since I was I was born.

I started writing back in middle school, originally just fun short stories for my friends, but over the course of high school and college I wrote a host of short stories and longer pieces. Being honest, the first two lengthy pieces I wrote were fanfictions, and they were/are terrible, but it was great practice and there was visible skill progression from the start of to the end of either book so it kept me motivated to keep writing. In terms of novel-length pieces, the first was around 80,000 words, second was around 200,000. Later in high school and throughout college, I started and scrapped a few different novel ideas usually a few chapters in. I currently have an alpha version of a manuscript for a psychological mystery novel which is around 70,000 words and I've recently started another novel. I read through everyone else's introductions the other day, but I unfortunately don't remember off the top of my head who made the comment on the 1,000,000 words being where you get an idea of what you're doing; including short stories and discontiinued pieces, I've easily passed the 500,000 word point and don't think I'm at the 1,000,000 yet. I've yet to have anything professionally published (amateur publishing in school things, yeah).

I'm also in charge of another writing group, but the format is a pretty different from how things are around here. In that one it's kind of a submit at your liesure (we use google docs) and provide feedback at liesure. Not many people in that group have active personal projects to submit however, and as it's a group of friends of friends and what not, skill level and motivations vary. I'm interesting in joining here for a group of fresh eyes, fresh feedback styles, and seeing another group in action/being in a group that's more active, essentially.

As for why I write, I enjoy the creation of scenes and ideas being presented in the storytelling format. As for reading, I have to admit, I haven't been reading actual books all too much lately. Most of my reading has been technical documentation and material I've been providing feedback on. Latest 'book' I've read is actually the Shadow's Beneath stories. My genre interests vary widely. So I guess, depending on what I see here, I may attempt submitting some of the psychological mystery, but I don't currently have plans to do so. When I make a bit more progress on my latest, unnamed piece, I may start submitting chapters of that. For now that I'm mostly interested in providing feedback and critique.

Look forward to working with everyone.

[Mandamon]

Welcome to Reading Excuses, Lord Juugatsu!  Lots of engineers around here.  I'm also a M.E.  Sounds like you have some writing under your belt already.  

 

Shadow's Beneath was excellent.  I really enjoyed seeing the writing process for the W.E. folks.

 

See you in the forums!

[Robinski]

I'm guessing you're not a real lord, so I'll call you Juugatsu. I'm a Civil Engineer, although some of my critiques might give you reason to question that!!

I remember the million words comment, Brandon mentioned it in RE way back. I think it might have been Stephen King?

Any-hoo, welcome and get something submitted. We're not proud round these parts, we'll read anything and everything :-)

Edited September 21, 2014 by Robinski

[Ash]

Hello,

 

My name is Ashley, but my friends call me Ash .  As you can probably tell by my typing, I have a massive southern accent (Louisiana USA).  I look forward to being a part of the writing club, though I work shift work, actually something called the Dupont Shift, so I lose track of the days sometimes so not always very prompt sadly.

 

I started writing years ago, but no one seemed interested in reading anything that I wrote, so I shelved it.  I started back a couple of years ago and actually did NANOWRIMO one year and finished a novel.  I now know that I basically wrote a lot of back story and am getting ready, psyching up that is, to start over, but man...it is daunting!  All them words yall! ha  I have always written short stories and have a novella or two so I'll start with them.  Hopefully they will entertain you folks and maybe the stories themselves can be improved to boot.

 

I came to this site because basically, I really like that Brandon writes great stuff, but more than that, he seems to still be gritty and difficult and all the real world stuff that anybody living has to deal with and still be classy.  I can really appreciate, not to mention respect, a writer delivering the picture of what is going on without dropping F bombs every other line and giving blow by blow accounts of things that go on behind closed doors.  I think that I would like to write like that.  I'm not knocking the other, just saying that as a writer that is not me...but I do read it at times. 

 

Books and authors I like....hmmm  David Brin, Startide Rising Favorite book for sure.  I do dig some Larry Niven, his short work is beyond compare IMHO.  Poul Anderson, the earlier stuff from Dan Simmons, John Scalzi Old Man's War stuff is great  Garth Nix, Sabriel and the series and A Confusion of Princes.  Inexplicably I really liked that book.  Neil Gaiman, great writer, but seems to write about the same ideas a bit to me.  Shockingly, I really liked The Host, but that is a bit embarrassing hah.  other Favs...Madness Season by C.S. Friendman and Relic by Preston and Child.

 

As you can see, I'm a bit all over, but that is what it is.  Oh and if any of you folks out there have any good ideas for short stories, lay it on me...I seem to be bereft of nuggets at the moment...maybe losing too many brain cells due to the shift work...

 

Thanks for allowing me into the club and for reading my rambling 

[Dysphoric Kitten]

Welcome, Ash!

(let me see if I can make it through the whole post without a single Scadrial reference)

 

We are glad to have you here, and we welcome you here! I really have little to say, except maybe that if you happen to see any book by Etgar Keret, especially the short story collection "Pipelines", give it a go. He is known here for his flash fiction, which I love, and is characterized by very informal writing and very original (and sometimes insane) plots, twists on the world and ideas in general. I am not quite sure if he was translated well into English, but it is probably worth a shot.

 

 

Oh, we have Juugatsu as well!

 

Ehm... I do not have too much to say to you either... So welcome! Glad to have you here with us! 

And feel free to try Etgar Keret as well

[renoard]

I did all this back in the ancient days of TWG and yore. Still--

I'm an old fart. My college carreer was all over the map but mostly I studied the philology and philosophy of the two best known works in hellenistic Greek and Classical Hebrew. ;P

Work is for suckers so I try to stay busy constantly. Wait-- Hey!

I was in a minor motorcysle accident in Nov. 2013 which lead to complications that left me with a partly functional spline, a hole where my gallbladder used to be and a hitch in my get-along. BTW Nat, if you're listening, I got dropped from the list in May and I'd like to restart. Guess I'll drop new addy in the other thread.

[Silk]

You got dropped? Odd. I wonder if I cleaned it out during one of those supposedly-yearly "reply to this email if you want to stay on the list" things I do? Anyway, I'll re-add you.

 

Edit: Just got another message from someone saying they got dropped and needed to be re-added, so maybe there's something going on there.

Edited November 1, 2014 by Silk

[Daddy_Warpig]

My net name is Daddy Warpig, and I've actually been a member of Reading Excuses since the old board (three years or so ago, right?).

 

Real life got very, uh, real shortly after my first submission, so I've been inactive ever since. I always intended on returning when I could write again, and here I am.

 

I run a daily blog, The House of Geekery (daddywarpig.com), and am one third of the crew on the Geek Gab live podcast (is.gd/geekgab). (We just interviewed John C Wright last Friday and Larry Correia a few weeks ago.)

 

I've been working through the Sad Puppies slate, and am currently reading Brad Torgerson's The Chaplain's War.

 

Great to be here, looking forward to it!

[rdpulfer]

I suppose I should introduce myself before I get too much further into the board. My name is Richard. Up until recently, I was primarily a comic book guy. My webcomic, presently in hiatus, is Blue Yonder (which is where my avatar comes from). I also wrote the comic "Bat & Wolf", which won Zeroes2Heroes' Direct2Development comic pitching contest. 

 

Recently, I started transitioning to prose. I'm currently putting the finishing touches on a mythology-based urban fantasy. 

 

I'm also the Director of Programs at InPrint Writers Organization, where I also had the pleasure of interviewing Mary Robinette Kowal for our radio show. 

 

I'm currently a little over halfway through "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss.

[Robinski]

Well, it seems to me that you guys are vastly overqualified for this forum ;o) that's some really exciting stuff.

Great to have you here, things have been a tad quiet over the last 3 or 4 weeks, so fresh blood is always welcome (mua-ha-ha), although it sounds like Daddy W has been here longer than I have, as a veteran of a mere 21 months.

Hey, DW are you a Black Sabbath fan? Just intrigued by your moniker.

And RD (my own initials as it happens!) I am defo going to check out your comic, been admiring the artwork of your avatar these last few days. (In fact I just did, that's way cool).

[Silk]

What kind of mythos is your urban fantasy based on, Richard? I study myth.

Edited March 4, 2015 by Silk

[rdpulfer]

It's based on all kinds of mythology, but the main emphasis is on Greek, Egyptian and Norse. I'm going to probably post the first chapter in a month or so, when I'm ready to editing for the final (to date) draft. 

[Silk]

Cool. Bit outside of my area generally (I've been looking mostly at West African and Central Asian myths) but still pretty neat.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Hi everyone, I suppose now is a good time for me to introduce myself, since I've already been going around doling out feedback like it's Halloween candy. I started writing as a kid and wrote stories on and off throughout high school and college, but my main focus was always music. I went to Berklee College of Music for Contemporary Writing & Production (part film scoring, part composition, part audio engineering). I do a lot of music composition and freelance audio production, and I have only recently gotten back into writing fiction. I spent most of the last year working on my first novel, which I just recently finished and will most likely try to submit in pieces to this group for feedback. It's a 120k word fantasy(ish) story about a woman who withdraws into a dream world in order to cope with tragic events in her life. 

 

My favorite authors include Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All), Carlos Ruiz Zafon (The Shadow of the Wind), Stephen King, Neil Gaiman (although I've only read American Gods, I thought it was amazing and I am definitely going to read more of his work), and of course, JK Rowling, whose writing basically shaped my childhood. I even like her new stuff. Of Brandon's books, I've actually only read Mistborn, but I plan on reading the entire trilogy and working my way through the rest of his catalog. I stumbled onto his BYU lecture series on Youtube while I was working on my novel and became obsessed, and from there I started working my way through the Writing Excuses archives. I'm excited to hear some of your feedback on my writing when I submit, and I'm excited to read some good stuff! I've already loved what I've read so far.