Novelist's Desk Forum Welcome

Thanks for stopping by. Go ahead and introduce yourself on this thread.

 

I am Gary. I've been writing novels for about four years now. You can find some of my work at www.LongTalePress.com.

I am looking forward to meeting other novelists to share ideas and help each other.

 

 

 My name is Patrick. I've only recently joined writerscafe.org but I have some interesting writing of my own. Feel free to check out what I have and I'll be more than happy to read whatever you might have.

Hey everybody, I'm Janine and I've been on WritersCafe for a little less than a year now. I know most of WritersCafe is made up of poets, but I'm more into writing novels. Feel free to send me messages or read requests or comments or whatever. =)

--Janine--

Hello,

My name is Jes. I have done quite a bit of writing, as is told of in my profile. Lately I have been very anxious to get back to writing, but I am also looking for people to do collaborative works with. I have done a few in the past, and they were a lot of fun to write and I thought the novels turned out better in the end due to the different perspectives being put together. I will probably post some of my own solitary writing on my profile in the near future. In the mean time, if anyone is interested in working together, let me know!

~Jes~

Hi! I'm Amanda. I've only been on Writer's Cafe for about four days. I've known I want to be an author since I was 8 years old. I am now 16. I'm a junior in high school. But don't think my writing is immature just because I'm so young. I've been developing my writing skills for a very long time and I learn new techniques and things about my own writing all the time. I hope that the other people in this group will take me seriously and read my work that I put a lot of effort into (at least I do when I actually am adding, which it seems I never have time anymore). I will be sure to read others' work if they ask me to! I am a very good editor, and actually, it's my "dream job" for the future.

I can't wait to meet you other members! (I love people.) =D

Amanda

It's great to have you all in the group. We're still small, but it looks like we've got some talent here.

So what would you like to get from this group? Writing advice? Help editing? A place to brag? Others?

 

Gary

 

I think the most important thing is the ability to work with other people to get some constructive criticism and editing done! I am a member of a few other writing forums where I have posted writing and all I usually get is such bland comments as "Good job" or "I really like this." I would much prefer someone to tell me what they like, what they don't like, and maybe some suggestions to fix the problem. Sounds like this is going to be a good group to get that out of!

I love to edit things so if anyone needs help with that, great! Also, I wouldn't mind some critique on my work. It's always good to have more than one opinion. =D

Hey y'all. I'm Nazarea and yes that is my real name and no it is not really pronounced Nazarea. Try Na (as in a child saying nu-huh!) and Sadia (as in the country in the middle east, really big in oil. Might have heard of it.) Now put it together...uh-huh, there ya go.

Okay, I've been writing for years. Since I was 14? and started my first novel a historical romance set in Rome. Which is finished, and never leaving my desk. Yeah, I was 14 okay? Then I moved on to fantasy, and I've been working on that for 7 years now (omg, has it really been that long?). You can read some of that on my profile, 'Wings of War'. I even have a glossary up for y'all, lol.  In late June I quit my job and came back home to be with my daughters and concentrate on writing. You can read about my epiphany on my profile, 'On Quitting'.

July 12th I started my first YA novel, and wrapped it up on August 12th. Not intentional, but there it is. I'm working on finding an agent for it--actually just reworked my query letter after getting my first four rejections (yay. I've been told to celebrate because I'm no longer a virgin. Honestly, I thought I lost that little title a few years ago when I got married.)

Anyway, I'm mostly a novel writer, but I have a large collection of short stories, which you can sample on my profile. One is being published in October, which I'm very excited about.

 

So, now if you've actually made it through my writing bio---and no I don't put this in the query, just for y'all--I'll say this: I strongly believe that helping other writers helps oneself. I have no problem reading and reviewing, but be patient with me if you ask me to look over something, because I do have two girls under the age of 3 and they are sorta demanding.

 

Looking forward to getting to know everyone!

N~

 

One of the exercises I run at work is to select a piece of writing (Computer manuals) and let the group have at it. What happens is that the piece gets edited, but more importantly, everyone gets a chance to talk about what works and what doesn't. All the writers learn to be better in the end. We could try that here if somebody wants to post a short piece in a forum thread, we could take it apart.

 

I promise not to run this ad too often, but I want everyone with a finished novel to know about a website I run at You can post an excerpt of your novel there for readers to review. When enough readers say they would buy the book, we publish it as an e-book, and offer it for sale in our book store.

The site is very new and we could use some quality books to help get it off the ground. Stop by, take a look around and let me know what you think.

I'm Cloister, and yes, I'm fairly private about my real identity.

But as to Gary's question, I have to say that I'm with LumpyOatmeal on this one: give me feedback that I can do something with.  As the HR people at my last company used to say about job reviews, give me actionable feedback.

Positive feedback can be terse, because after all, there's nothing to fix; it's fine to say "good job, I liked that", because that at least tells me I'm on the right track.

But negative feedback needs to be explained.  It's not fine to say "that sucked, go flip burgers for a living" because that gives me no hint about what in particular you found to be sucky, nor what I could have done differently to reduce the suckage.

I sometimes worry when I review people's writing here and elsewhere that I'm being too harsh, that I come across like a jerk or whatever because I actually do criticise in the literal sense of offering a critique.  But I always strive to make my critique specific and detailed enough that you can do something with it.  I'm not trying to be mean, I really am just offering one person's perspective on your work.  It's not the only perspective, and it's certainly not the last word on anything, but I promise you it will always be honest and it will always offer a concrete suggestion.

If something is such a hopeless mess that I don't even know where to begin, then I just won't review it at all.  That whole "if you can't say something nice" thing.  If I do review your work, you can take that as a sign that I thought it was good enough to deserve being made better.

Hi, TJ Graham here!...I've been writing for a few years but it was all just crap, mostly stemming from various high-school assingments and whatnot.
However, I've matured more in my writing skill, but skill "ain't got nothin' to do with it".
All that matters is you and your readers enjoy what you write.

              -TJ

Welcome to the group, Becca.

I think you will be able to count on some of the folks here to take the gloves off and give you an honest, helpful review. Right gang?

 

Hello, and thanks for the invitation to join this wonderful group of novelists.  I look forward to reading your works, and hope you'll enjoy reading a few of mine.  Siobhan Welch

My name is Ken and I haven't had a drink for...  Oh wait, I forgot where I was.

Welcome aboard, Yoshi.

I like your novel idea. I hope we can help you here to iron out the rough spots.

 

Hey everyone, I'm Sound. I've been on this site for about two weeks. I'm glad I found it because I had wanted to get critiques on my writing and such. I'm twenty-one years old and I've been writing since middle school. When I began I was totally into Stephen King and was always writing short horror stories and such but then somewhere in high school I began getting into reading pulitzer prize winners and classic literature and sort of stopped  with the horror (although I still read it from time to time). I love writing and I've wanted to be a published author for a long time, but I've never been able to finish a novel, always getting to the 100-200 page halfway point in my story and stopping. Then for a long period I went into poetry and loved it. I just recently started back up on story telling until shaping up for a novel. I have many ideas. I hope to get some in depth criticism from you all.

Heya sound!