If you are going to try and make a living writing, stop reading right now and go some place else. Writing should be for fun, not money. In this series of articles, we will discuss the ways you can get your book published at little or no cost, except for the copies you want. But first lets talk about why you want to write.

Recording Memories

A lot of us write to record the events and memories we have had. These make great stories that a lot of other people would enjoy. If you have trouble remembering details, then make the book fiction and make up all the details you want. When we are young, the memories are fresh, but we don't have as many of them. Young people usually are too busy to write down those experiences, or believe that they are just not interesting.

Older people start thinking about telling stories about their past but may be reluctant to start writing. I started writing short articles about things that interested me and shared them on line. Then I started writing poetry about the things around me. Now I am writing about the experiences I have had in my lifetime in the form of fiction books. The more I write the more experiences come to mind, not only mine but others I know as well. Fiction is a great place to tell all those short stories.

Practice makes perfect

Well, I would not claim to be prefect by any means, but practice does make writing easer and enable us to write more. And change is good also, write some poetry, then a bio, then some fiction. Try to write a little each day, even if it is just a small amount. Of course if it is not fun, then done force your self to write. When I push myself, it usually does not turn out too well. When writing "Drawn to Darkness," I thought up all the chapter titles in one sitting. This gave me a starting outline that I could build on. Then just had fun telling about experiences with made up names for people, and places. The freedom of not having to think about what will sell, or even make a good book give you the freedom to explore directions you might not otherwise take. Again, practice is the key, the more you write the easier it becomes.

Don't worry about grammar

Let the spell checker in your word processor watch out for you and write in your own style. When writing for fun, the object is to get the story down on paper. You will spend plenty of time later making corrections and improving on the story. When you think you are through and have gone through your book many times, try and find some to proofread it for you. Be sure and give them the freedom to mark up a copy as much as they want and even make any comments they want. If something does not make sense to them, they will let you know and you can work on it some more.

Putting it together

You may have several books started at once, that's OK, it called practice. With some of those memories now on paper, you should feel better at accomplished something. I know that I need to feel like I accomplished something each day. That feel good feeling is what to look for and the best way to achieve it is to get the book into some finished form. I like to have my books printed out with the nice covers and then relax and review them. It also helps to give the person that is reviewing it for you to have a finished looking book also.

In the next article "How to write for fun part 2", we will really start having fun as we look at publishing options.

For a Free sneek preview of the fiction Drawn to Darkness

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