Tips and tricks for new authors

Introduction

Hi, I'm Jess. I figured writing this would help out a lot of people like me, who started off not really knowing where they were going, people who couldn't afford classes, or people who are just simply curious and share some of the things I learned along the way.

*I am dyslexic so there will be errors and I will fix them when I find them so I apologize ahead of time*

Everyone knows what it's like to have that idea, that itch, in the back of their mind that they need to get out, they need to scratch. It happens so suddenly sometimes; like if you see a picture of a landscape while you're scrolling through social media and boom, you're transported into this, place. You see it all happen, the whole story, right before your eyes, or perhaps just the beginning, middle or end, and think, "I need to write that down, I need to write this story."

But then when you go to get it down on paper, it ends up being a vague, jumbled mess that you accidentally spent too much time on some parts and not enough on others and now you have no idea where to start, where to go from there.

Some people, like myself, started out by just simply writing. Naming it Chapter One, and just jumping in, head first, knowing the gist of what you were going to write. You just wanted to wing it, to write it organically, to let the words flow from your mind and fill the paper as you went. But by doing so you make the characters on the fly, you meet them for the first time in your head and they end up not coming out quite right or just possibly flat.

Then while you're writing you think of scenes and things that will happen much later on in the story, you get SO excited about it that you lose focus on where you are, and want to go to that part right then and there. So you do, you don't and forget it, or you write it down for later and when you finally get there, to that point in your story, you have no idea how to incorporate it into what you have already established. 

Some people are more clean cut than that, however, and start with an outline. Outlines are great, but if you don't know how to format them to work with YOU, you will get bored and stop or just give up on it completely. Losing that extra tool that could be the one thing that you've been missing that could help cut out a lot of time spent rewriting, back tracking or feeling like you have writer's block because you can't figure out what you wanted to do next.

Then comes the dreadful editing. You pour literal hours into perfecting your work, searching for errors and it's painful. Or you don't, because you hate it, because you are scared of what you might find. But, editing can be that next step for your book to be considered for publishing, or is honestly the one thing you need to broaden your pool of readers. Don't worry, we ALL make mistakes. Why do you think there are so many editions of popular books? Because people write in and tell them about the mistakes they find, even after the professionals have edited it thirty times with ten different sets of eyes.

No matter your writing style, your process, or the way your mind works, I'm going to try and expand on some of these issues and try to help you either, find your voice, find a style, find a process, or just simply help you begin.

There is no one way to write, what works for you might not work for someone else and that's okay. But there is no harm in trying new things, new ways to go about doing something. Because in the end, you will learn something no matter how small or large that something might be.