From First to Final Draft - The New Creative Writing Thread.

[CharCharGabor]

Everybody's welcome, if you want to share ideas, techniques, publishing info or just chat about writing. Come on in!

Thank you Novelist,

You have answered all of my questions, thats great.I like Contemporary Womens Fiction.I am struggling right now as a single parent to find the time to write/edit but the encouragment form this thread is wonderful.

ah, writing's ideal for single parents! esp if dc are young enough to have an earlyish bedtime. I started to have something productive to do in the evenings.

Very true Ninah, and I like the way you look at things.

No worries! I know it's shockingly difficult trying to work writing around kids, but there are ways to do it (which usually involve sleep deprivation, lol!).

I think the biggest the part of the problem is often how you approach the writing. Even now, many books on, I'll still think I need some huge chunk of time to write in. But those huge chunks of time simply don't exist any more, so you have to work with what you've got.

One thing that I find quite helpful is sprinting. Get an egg timer and tell yourself you'll write for half an hour, or forty-five minutes and then go at it hard and fast. It's much easier to do that than to think, 'Oh, I'm going to write this evening' and then stuff about writing 200 words over three hours. With forty-five minutes, you can get a lot done and you still have time to watch something on TV, or read etc.. Sprinting is fun to do with writing friends as well. You can do it over just one evening, or three evenings a week etc. and compare word counts.

Hope that makes sense!

My problem is that my son won't nap. I've got used to writing in small snatches but he won't give me a moment to even eat these days sigh. Trying to get myself to the keyboard in the evenings but he goes to bed at 8pm and I'm not having much luck.

Sprints are fab. I'm a member of Forward Motion (writing forum, the boards are a bit slow/clunky but the chat room is good) and used to use its chat rooms a lot for sprints. Everyone would start writing at a particular time and we'd see what we had five minutes later or whatever. I keep meaning to see if any other forums do something like it as I don't use FM as often these days.

Hi. I've re-written the book 4 times now. I think it's done.

Hope you are all being productive.

You can do it KerryMumbles!! Go on, give it all that you have.

I recieved a 'I am sorry, but at present we aren?t looking at new submissions. Do check our website in the New Year to see if the situation has changed. Our children?s agent is ....' Is this good or a bog standard piss off?