Looking for a mentor to help get me through my first book

Welcome to AW, Dana.

The whole site is a mentor. Start reading for info and inspiration!

Here's my opening advice:

Write a minimum of 250 words a day. 500 words are better. 1000 words will give you a novel draft in 2-3 months.

and

First drafts are allowed to be crap. In the first draft, do not look back, do not edit, do not stop. If you look over your shoulder, you may turn into a pillar of salt.

and

Post a chapter of your novel in the Share Your Work (SYW) forum. This will give people an idea of your style and the book's content.

Welcome aboard! I'm fairly recent to AW myself and it's helped me keep working on my WIP.

My suggestion is to find a local writers group in your area as well. I recently found two, myself. One recently restarted and the other one recently started up a new branch. Both have helped, although I have only gone to one meeting each so far. (Just found them last month.) Having to commit to bringing stuff to a group helps get things done.

I agree with Phaeal. Set up a schedule of at least one hour a day when you can write. It's like getting yourself in shape or learning to play an instrument. You have to be dedicated and commit to putting in hours of practice to learn the craft. My theory is that everyone thinks they know how to write just because they know the language. You can sit down and write a letter without learning anything new. But becoming a writer is a whole 'nother animal. But can you sit down and play the piano without study and practice? Can you run a marathon with training your body first?

And yeah, keep in mind that your work will go through many, many changes before you can call it finished. Don't sweat the small stuff at first. That will happen later.

Oh, and one other thing you'll learn here. Charlie Horse doesn't know what the heck he's talking about.

Welcome, Dana.

Further down the board, we have a forum dedicated to finding Betas and Mentors.
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=30

Good luck!

Welcome to AW!

You'll find this to be a very safe, positive place to learn the craft. AW is different from other boards in that the mods are really cool troll-busters. That doesn't mean you won't get a good critique, but no flame wars are allowed.

I love that about this joint!

Here are some other helpful places for writers. They may not be for your specific genre, but writing is writing, and certain rules work for all.

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/


http://www.eharlequin.com/store.html;jsessionid=C4B3889D008970B546FF2297F1E047C5?cid=535
Mostly for romance, but has helpful articles!

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/
This site will help you steer clear of the sharks in the publishing pool!

Good luck!

Hi and welcome!

Get to know your characters. It's like Goldilocks. You don't want too few or too many. Add qualities to their lives that make them seem as real as people you know, so that you can anticipate what they would say and do in a situation.

Dana Beren Watts said:

II'd really like to find a mentor (someone to kick me in gear and lead me away from pitfalls) but at this point I'll take whatever I can get.

Click to expand...

You aren't allowed to log into the Internet again until you reach the end of Chapter Six.

James D. Macdonald said:

You aren't allowed to log into the Internet again until you reach the end of Chapter Six.

Click to expand...

That's a good mentor And the best part is that all his wisdom is indexed neatly here (full version here.)

what if you write a short and lame draft all the way to the end? If you get to a section where you have a scene of dialogue where you know what the purpose or the nature of the dialogue is, but say, you don't know one of the characters well enough yet, just say in your draft, 'They talked about how Robin still hadn't graduated, and it made Rebecca cry. Tom felt completely powerless' - now, maybe this dialogue will take a couple of pages in a later draft, but the point of the first draft is only got get to type "The End" and mean it. As long as everything in between is Narrative (ie - there is no stuff like "(reminder to self - fill in conversation here)") and you can write "The End" and it is appropriate, you've hit a big milestone in writing your first book.

LN

pps - another thought - write as much and as often as you can - so even if you only do it a couple of times a week, and even if one session all you write is a short paragraph, it's good, coz you've written something, and that is better than writing nothing

Like my motto says "Write the Damn Book", don't worry about every little detail now, that is what the second and third drafts are for.

The first draft is basically a grouping of your ideas thrown onto paper or pc screen that has a story inside its ugly exterior.

We have a forum just for hooking up writers and mentors. I'm moving this thread there.

And there's the SYW forum--post chapter one, then two..etc. But the main thing is the discipline to write and that's your job, butt in chair, write.