Hello members of Aw!
I want to start by thanking Lisa (Admin) for helping me with the registration (i didn't realize that it's hand-approved, so i thought i had done some mistake and sent an email requesting help).
For now i'm going by the name "Robin Pike" (it's the name i use for most internet related things), i'm 23 years old and i'm completely lost.
An introduction is not an easy thing to do, specially because i think i joined AW for selfish reasons. I am not a writer, i never wrote anything "story-like", and i don't know anyone that does. I never thought i would want to write a story of my own, until about 1 month ago. Then everything changed for me. It all started with an empty 2012 appointment book, a song, and a character. In a few minutes i suddenly have this story, set in a certain place, about this character all in my head. Soon after i felt the "need" to share this story with other people, even with only 5 other people in the world read it, i would be happy. So i first thought about writing some kind of very short story and then just share it online. And I set one weekend to do it.
Here ends the short version of the introduction. Everything written after this it's basically me crying, ranting and asking lots of questions. Moderator "reddog" said in the "Writing Your Introductory Post":
"It's a good time to ask questions about AW or writing, too." So, that's what I'm going to do.
On that weekend, my project went down hill extremely fast! I soon realized that a short story would not suffice. New characters where born in my head, with new backstories, new ideals, new goals... And then i came to the conclusion that at least 3 of those characters deserved their own story. Then those characters started having families, friends, people around them, relations where established between them... each one of them has their own personalty, and then their physical appearance started to take form, i now know how they behave, how they talk, the clothes they like to wear, the food they prefer and the what they detest.
I feel that I've gotten out of control. Since that point, i have about 9 entire "nations" (not really "nations" but lets call them that for now) in my head and notebooks. For each nation i have their physical and human geography, their politics system, their relations with the other "nations", their people's characteristics and cultures, their economic needs and deals, the kind of fauna and flora in their territory, their resources, their military and political strength/influence... so much information about places that don't really exist. From this, i started drawing possibilities of maps for where the story would take place, and by now i have a good general idea of how everything connects together with the main story.
While doing this, the story started to grow more and more, both in size and complexity. My original idea of a short-story is long gone, i made a quick stop by the "I'll write one book" station, and now I'm pretty convinced that I'll need 3 books, a trilogy, in order to properly tell this story. (And dam it... my stupid brain already has a bunch of ideas for the start of a continuation for that trilogy.)
And it has been fun creating an entire "world" in my mind and notes. But, a few days ago, i was hit really hard by the hammer of reality (and it still hurts). My mind and heart are now filled with lots of questions and uncertainties.
I don't know anyone that writes stories like this, so i turned to some people i know for advice. Family was somewhat supportive, and i'm thankful for the "If that's what you want, do it.", but it doesn't really answer any of my questions. A few acquaintances where a little more demotivating, with a "You're far too young to write a book. Do that once you retire.", other gave me advice that, while a bit demotivating it might be good, i don't know: "If you really love that story, you should not write your first book about it, or it will be bad." In the middle of all of this, i found out that a friend and colleague is actually struggling with the similar problems, because he has a Science Fiction story in his head, and he wants to share it. So now brace for a new rant about my problems.
The first and perhaps major problem that lingers in my mind is the first character, the one that sparked the entire story. After letting my imagination loose, and creating everything after that character, i realized that maybe i can't even use said character in my story. This character originated from an already existing character. She (yes it's a she), is a very secondary character from an already published work, without even thinking i made her the center of my story. She shares with the "original" her first name, more or less her appearance, and somewhat of her "dressing style", tho everything else is different, and the setting is completely different (the story and their personalities don't match very much), I still don't know how to solve this. Removing her from the story is almost impossible, even tho she might not take a major role in some of the books, the story is empty without her. Changing her name and appearance could probably solve it, but then i would have to change a lot of hidden symbolism (that i already engraved into some actions and etc). Should i contact the original author (no idea how) and ask for his permission? When should i do that? Now? When it's done? I don't know anything.
More problems, i don't know if i can write well or not. Like I've mentioned, I've never wrote a story like this before, and i haven't read that many books (not counting books for university about each subject and for research etc) specially in recent years. I don't know if i can even do this! And at the same time I've forbidden myself from starting to write about this story in a "formal" manner, all I've allowed myself to do is to take notes about details/events that come to my mind. I almost can't stop thinking about the story (it almost plays like scenes from a movie in my head, i can see everything), but i also have a thesis to write for the next 8 months, and that requires a lot of reading and writing, so i can't "waste" time writing the story.
I also don't know in what language i should write it! I've said that i would be happy if 5 people would read it, but i think every author's happiness increases according to the amount of people reading his story. Is that wrong? Anyway, some of my notes are in my language, some are in English... some of my notes have sentences that start in one language and end in another (or have random words in the middle that don't match the language of the sentence). My (damaged and retarded) brain makes me think that I'll just make two versions of the books, one in my language and one in English, how hard can it be huh?
I don't know what would be best, authors from my language in my country, don't usually fair too well with the type of story that i'm trying to share. And i don't know if i could ever see a book in another language being published here, with a complete "no one" as an author. I don't even know if i have the ability to write in any language.
I've seen written, somewhere in the internet, that an author should not write about what he likes / knows more about. What's the meaning of this? I'm afraid of this because the world that the story is set in is heavily based on the knowledge I've acquired from reading research books for university. In some of my notes it looks like I'm writing a manual about some items, and I've also created new things to solve problems that persisted with some of those "items" that i describe. So if i should not write about what I've been researching, then my entire story goes down the toilet.
I also don't know anything about, editing, publishing, what rights do i have... but i bet I'll find things about that somewhere here, once i have the time to fully explore AW. But, regarding authors rights, when should i "register" a book?
Should i wait until the book is finished? But then what if someone steals it before i finish?
If I'm going for a trilogy, how and when should i register? Do i register all 3 books at once, even tho they might not be finished? Or one at the time?
And what about the title? I already put my hands in my head for this one, i came up (in the day that this idea sparked in my mind) with the perfect title for the trilogy (subtitles for each book are still in the "brain machine"), and then i found out that there's some book about board games (i think) with the same name! And behold... one week later i see that one PC game's DLC came out with the exact same name. What do i do?
In any case, every time i listen to the song that pushed this story into me, i come up with new ideas, and my notebooks get more written pages everyday.
I'm going to stop my rant here. I've told how I've gotten into this state, and i asked a lot of questions already. I think I'm just completely lost, and i shameful came here looking for a helping hand to pat me in the head and say: "Start by breathing." or something.
Thank you to everyone that took the time to read my entire rant. And a special thank you to everyone that might be typing right now, in order to calm my heart.
I want to start by thanking Lisa (Admin) for helping me with the registration (i didn't realize that it's hand-approved, so i thought i had done some mistake and sent an email requesting help).
For now i'm going by the name "Robin Pike" (it's the name i use for most internet related things), i'm 23 years old and i'm completely lost.
An introduction is not an easy thing to do, specially because i think i joined AW for selfish reasons. I am not a writer, i never wrote anything "story-like", and i don't know anyone that does. I never thought i would want to write a story of my own, until about 1 month ago. Then everything changed for me. It all started with an empty 2012 appointment book, a song, and a character. In a few minutes i suddenly have this story, set in a certain place, about this character all in my head. Soon after i felt the "need" to share this story with other people, even with only 5 other people in the world read it, i would be happy. So i first thought about writing some kind of very short story and then just share it online. And I set one weekend to do it.
Here ends the short version of the introduction. Everything written after this it's basically me crying, ranting and asking lots of questions. Moderator "reddog" said in the "Writing Your Introductory Post":
"It's a good time to ask questions about AW or writing, too." So, that's what I'm going to do.
On that weekend, my project went down hill extremely fast! I soon realized that a short story would not suffice. New characters where born in my head, with new backstories, new ideals, new goals... And then i came to the conclusion that at least 3 of those characters deserved their own story. Then those characters started having families, friends, people around them, relations where established between them... each one of them has their own personalty, and then their physical appearance started to take form, i now know how they behave, how they talk, the clothes they like to wear, the food they prefer and the what they detest.
I feel that I've gotten out of control. Since that point, i have about 9 entire "nations" (not really "nations" but lets call them that for now) in my head and notebooks. For each nation i have their physical and human geography, their politics system, their relations with the other "nations", their people's characteristics and cultures, their economic needs and deals, the kind of fauna and flora in their territory, their resources, their military and political strength/influence... so much information about places that don't really exist. From this, i started drawing possibilities of maps for where the story would take place, and by now i have a good general idea of how everything connects together with the main story.
While doing this, the story started to grow more and more, both in size and complexity. My original idea of a short-story is long gone, i made a quick stop by the "I'll write one book" station, and now I'm pretty convinced that I'll need 3 books, a trilogy, in order to properly tell this story. (And dam it... my stupid brain already has a bunch of ideas for the start of a continuation for that trilogy.)
And it has been fun creating an entire "world" in my mind and notes. But, a few days ago, i was hit really hard by the hammer of reality (and it still hurts). My mind and heart are now filled with lots of questions and uncertainties.
I don't know anyone that writes stories like this, so i turned to some people i know for advice. Family was somewhat supportive, and i'm thankful for the "If that's what you want, do it.", but it doesn't really answer any of my questions. A few acquaintances where a little more demotivating, with a "You're far too young to write a book. Do that once you retire.", other gave me advice that, while a bit demotivating it might be good, i don't know: "If you really love that story, you should not write your first book about it, or it will be bad." In the middle of all of this, i found out that a friend and colleague is actually struggling with the similar problems, because he has a Science Fiction story in his head, and he wants to share it. So now brace for a new rant about my problems.
The first and perhaps major problem that lingers in my mind is the first character, the one that sparked the entire story. After letting my imagination loose, and creating everything after that character, i realized that maybe i can't even use said character in my story. This character originated from an already existing character. She (yes it's a she), is a very secondary character from an already published work, without even thinking i made her the center of my story. She shares with the "original" her first name, more or less her appearance, and somewhat of her "dressing style", tho everything else is different, and the setting is completely different (the story and their personalities don't match very much), I still don't know how to solve this. Removing her from the story is almost impossible, even tho she might not take a major role in some of the books, the story is empty without her. Changing her name and appearance could probably solve it, but then i would have to change a lot of hidden symbolism (that i already engraved into some actions and etc). Should i contact the original author (no idea how) and ask for his permission? When should i do that? Now? When it's done? I don't know anything.
More problems, i don't know if i can write well or not. Like I've mentioned, I've never wrote a story like this before, and i haven't read that many books (not counting books for university about each subject and for research etc) specially in recent years. I don't know if i can even do this! And at the same time I've forbidden myself from starting to write about this story in a "formal" manner, all I've allowed myself to do is to take notes about details/events that come to my mind. I almost can't stop thinking about the story (it almost plays like scenes from a movie in my head, i can see everything), but i also have a thesis to write for the next 8 months, and that requires a lot of reading and writing, so i can't "waste" time writing the story.
I also don't know in what language i should write it! I've said that i would be happy if 5 people would read it, but i think every author's happiness increases according to the amount of people reading his story. Is that wrong? Anyway, some of my notes are in my language, some are in English... some of my notes have sentences that start in one language and end in another (or have random words in the middle that don't match the language of the sentence). My (damaged and retarded) brain makes me think that I'll just make two versions of the books, one in my language and one in English, how hard can it be huh?
I don't know what would be best, authors from my language in my country, don't usually fair too well with the type of story that i'm trying to share. And i don't know if i could ever see a book in another language being published here, with a complete "no one" as an author. I don't even know if i have the ability to write in any language.
I've seen written, somewhere in the internet, that an author should not write about what he likes / knows more about. What's the meaning of this? I'm afraid of this because the world that the story is set in is heavily based on the knowledge I've acquired from reading research books for university. In some of my notes it looks like I'm writing a manual about some items, and I've also created new things to solve problems that persisted with some of those "items" that i describe. So if i should not write about what I've been researching, then my entire story goes down the toilet.
I also don't know anything about, editing, publishing, what rights do i have... but i bet I'll find things about that somewhere here, once i have the time to fully explore AW. But, regarding authors rights, when should i "register" a book?
Should i wait until the book is finished? But then what if someone steals it before i finish?
If I'm going for a trilogy, how and when should i register? Do i register all 3 books at once, even tho they might not be finished? Or one at the time?
And what about the title? I already put my hands in my head for this one, i came up (in the day that this idea sparked in my mind) with the perfect title for the trilogy (subtitles for each book are still in the "brain machine"), and then i found out that there's some book about board games (i think) with the same name! And behold... one week later i see that one PC game's DLC came out with the exact same name. What do i do?
In any case, every time i listen to the song that pushed this story into me, i come up with new ideas, and my notebooks get more written pages everyday.
I'm going to stop my rant here. I've told how I've gotten into this state, and i asked a lot of questions already. I think I'm just completely lost, and i shameful came here looking for a helping hand to pat me in the head and say: "Start by breathing." or something.
Thank you to everyone that took the time to read my entire rant. And a special thank you to everyone that might be typing right now, in order to calm my heart.
