Being a professional author is my *third* choice for optimal career. I do have an average of three or four long-term projects in the works at any given time, and an inability to stop thinking about my ideas is one of the major contributing factors to my ongoing insomnia. I'd love to be published someday. 

It's interesting, because the way I think about writing is very similar to the way I think about my *first* and *second* choices (acting, then scenic or costume design). I once read a book that said something to the effect that, if you have a choice and there's something else that you could be happy doing for the rest of your life, you should go do that and not be an actor. Because acting is a viable career ONLY for those people who are so deeply enamored with the profession (and crazy enough) that there IS no choice, and they act because they HAVE to. I feel the same applies to writing professionally, considering how miserable what is ostensibly hobby writing can be. 

I think the drive to share one's ideas is an innate part of being human, something everybody does, some more than others and something that everyone expresses differently; writers write, actors act, artists paint, architects build, programmers write software, entrepreneurs create new products, et cetera. 

I don't agree that the ideas-sharing going on in the IW is sad, because the pre-publishing process of sharing one's amateur works with other amateurs is, I think, a valuable one. It's through sharing that we improve, and if we never improve, how can one expect to be published? It's a way of developing skill and learning from one's mistakes and so on. 

My (awesome) playwriting professor last semester told us that every idea we have will be better than the previous one, and that we will have our BEST idea on our deathbeds. I told her that that was super depressing and she said it was less depressing than looking back from your deathbed and realizing that you wrote your best work when you were nineteen and that was sixty years ago. Because the process of writing is inherently one of change, and every time we do it, we get better, and we should always be striving to get better. And sharing works that we KNOW will more than likely never be published or shared with the general public is a part of that process of improvement. 

So yeah. That's my two cents.

I think that this needs to be discussed.

First of all, I don't write all the time, and sometimes I'll go months without writing.  But I have finished one really awful mystery that took me a year, and did complete my 30,000 word Nano.  After Nano (and pitifully starting another thing that has ABSOLUTELY NO PLOT), I've barely written anything.  

I don't share a lot of my stuff, either.  I did do figment for about 5 months, but I did almost no writing on that website.  There's this youth magazine in my area where I published 5 chapters of Elemental Magic (a fantasy I've had on figment, and posted the first chapter here somewhere), but it was quarterly, so I wasn't exactly writing at a Nano rate every day.

And now I have all these ideas floating around my head (and that wonder about what would happen if Alaska Young and Augustus Waters met) and they're not going anywhere.

So, yeah.  I think we need to have some serious critique threads on the InkW.  Or just places to share something we wrote recently.

Nyarsh, I sound really weird in this post.  IMAGINARY LLAMA.  That sounds better. 

I get what you're getting at.

Sure I would probably be offended if you said what threads in specific are "Cute and Little," but I get how they're never going to have a chance. I love the idea or plot on the story chains I post on, but seriously, the chances of these great ideas getting published (technically anything on the web is published, yes, but that's not what I mean) are somewhere between 1-0. Who is going to take the time to transfer all the installments, organize transitions, and then you have the problem of so many people.

I don't know if this is what you were getting at, but it's what I understood.

Yes, in case anybody was wondering, I have thought of writing, drawing, and carrtooning as my main career ideas (though I'm in 6th grade). I love writing more than anyone I personally know. Sadly, I am a slow typer, my handwriting is big and sloopy, and my ideas often fall off a cliff (sometimes quite literally). I have not been writing anything recently I've felt has any purpose except for perhaps story chains on here.

I believe what you're proposing is that the threads (I call them story chains if you haven't caught that) should be finished? Should be turned into real stories (not that they're not REAL--I mean, notings fake, a fake mustace is still a real fake mustace)? I'm not postitively sure, but here's how I reacted. 

I'm sure there are people out there who are way more serious about writing then me. Now, I love write, but during the school year I get too busy. I write in the summer, and then a few scattered times during the rest of the year. Usually, I imagine stories during car rides and while I try to sleep, but only a few of them get on paper. 

I've recently turned to writing fanfiction because while I do have some long term ideas in my brain, I'm letting them stew for a while before actually writing anything. My Nano from last year was absolutely awful. I swear it's the worst piece of fiction I've written since sixth grade, excluding a narrative for school last year. Maddie's the main character, but she has absolutely no personality whatsoever and annoys me so much. There's really nothing about her that I like. And none of the other characters are very good either, except maybe Reaper and Azrael and Kieran, and Jessica's okay. So fanfiction, because they already have personalities that I can deal with.

I really want to be a writer.  My goal is to become an Imagineer and write on the side.  I've already written a full novel.  I also found a way to submit manuscripts on the Harper Collins Children's site.  However, I'm a little scared of the rejection that I'm sure is inevitable, so the book has been sitting on a flash drive in my laptop case for two years.  Yes, that does mean since I was 12.  

I have two notebooks sitting in my room with two stories in them (The Past Cloth and Hortensia) that I originally posted on Figment, then took off because I thought they had real promise and I wanted to develop them better.  Now, on Figment, I'm posting a serial called Lost Girl.   If you wan to read it, just search the title on Figment.  The cover has a picture of a boy picking up a girl and hugging her.  I also have a story I want to write that's about Alice and The Mad Hatter's daughter.  I outlined it in my little yellow notebook.  I think I'm going to save it for NaNo, if/when I do it.

So, yeah, I think I can do it when I get over my fear of rejection.  And laziness.  I also discovered what writing I'm best at: romance.  Which is kind of ironic because I haven't been involved in a romance, but I'm a bit of a sucker for romantic movies/books, so whatever.  I wrote a romantic short story for my school's literary magazine and my friend was blown away by it, so I decided to start including a little bit into my other stories and it seems to be going well.  Don't expect them to be mushy, though.  They're mostly fantasy, still.  Well, fantasy, but some take place in our world.

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