Good morning all!

MichaelMDickson

Registered
Joined
Nov 18, 2013
Messages
15
Reaction score
0
Location
United States
Website
OutlineYourNovel.com
I'm excited to be here!

A little about myself:

I'm married with three kids and a wonderful and supporting wife. I work fulltime as an IT Salesperson.
I'm a bit of an odd duck. I consider myself a writer, but its not my passion. My true passion is teaching people how to structure their novels correctly.
When I started studying writing years ago, I found there are really two huge learning curves to this whole thing:

1. You must know how to structure a novel including characterization, plot arch, yada, yada, yada prior to having a chance at traditional publishing.

2. Once you learn that, you have a lifetime of work ahead of you to actually learn how to write the darn thing!

Now, I've written several 80- 95k word count manuscripts, but only to test what I've learned in step one. I must say, I don't have the itch to move to step two. Not yet anyway. For now, I'm sticking with step one and hopefully I can help some who know less than me, and learn from others who know more.
 

ZachJPayne

Beware: #amQuerying
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 15, 2013
Messages
1,265
Reaction score
163
Age
33
Location
Warren, PA
Website
zachjpayne.com
Welcome to the water cooler, Michael!
More help and advice is always welcome around here. Can't wait to see you on the boards :)
 

Rockweaver

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 9, 2013
Messages
3,007
Reaction score
220
Location
Texas
Michael congrats on the completed works and welcome to the cooler
 

regdog

The Scavengers
Staff member
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 27, 2008
Messages
58,075
Reaction score
21,013
Location
She/Her
hello.gif



Take some time and read the Newbie Guide and the Stickies found
at the top of Forum pages. They are your best guide to learning about
Absolute Write.


Please read the FAQ about posting photos.


In fact we have lots of brilliant FAQs check them out.


Members who want to start a thread in Share Your Work to have work critiqued need
50 posts. Don’t make a mad dash to reach your 50 posts. That is frowned upon and can lead to your posts being deleted.
Take some time to greet fellow newbies, critique other members’ works, or join a discussion.


Announcements, Events and Self Promotion is for active members only. All obvious spam will be deleted on sight!
 

Izz

Doing the Space Operatic
Staff member
Moderator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 8, 2008
Messages
8,298
Reaction score
2,568
Location
NZ
Website
www.justgoodfiction.com
Welcome to AW, Michael! :welcome:

You'll love it here, i'm sure. AW is, imo, the best online writing resource and community out there, bar none. We have writers of all types here, who write in many different ways. One of the biggest things i've learnt from being a member here is that there is no One Way to write. What works for one writer might not work at all for the next writer. Sometimes, what works for one writer with one story might not work at all for their next story!

I look forward to seeing you around the boards! :)
 

L. Y.

Thread surfer and virtual bartender
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 10, 2012
Messages
7,629
Reaction score
2,466
Location
The 808
Welcome to the Water Cooler!

:welcome:

AW is a huge place, and there's a lot of information to be found here. Take your time and browse around to get a feel of the various forums.

For those interested in receiving a critique of your work, there is a 50-post rule. Here's a link to some of the most commonly asked questions in the FAQs. Wondering what those interesting acronyms used around the forum mean? Find out in the Absolute Write Dictionary.

And don't forget to check out the Newbie Guide.

Enjoy your stay. :)
 

rwm4768

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
15,472
Reaction score
767
Location
Missouri
Welcome. Good luck with your writing efforts (even if you never intend to publish them). And I'm glad you've found a structure that can help people.
 

Nadja V.

late bloomer
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 9, 2013
Messages
840
Reaction score
41
Location
Tennessee
Hi Michael, and welcome!

I'm an old hand at a lot of things, but writing novels isn't one of them. I'm driven to write by characters (I've this ongoing love affair with humanity, and it sort of overflows into story form). I'm sure I'll be picking your brain on plotting, as that is where I tend to run into difficulties!

You've found a good place to hang out...
 

jessie S

Registered
Joined
Nov 19, 2013
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Hi,
I'm brand new at this kind of talk thing although I've been writing novels for many, many years - just have a novella out from Soul Mate, "Orchard HIll," my first published book although I've had short stories for years. My latest will be out in February as part of the N.H. Pulp Fiction series, "Love Free of die," a horrible take on our state motto.