Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

Well, I got my first story picked up by an e-zine called Death Head Grin () that should publish in February. No pay for this one, but it's a start!

Yeah, I at least *attempt* to write... I wrote a novel in jr high that I have been trying to re-arrange and fix up for... uhh... 15 years now?

I basically get a chapter or two in... re-edit it a few times, then completely scrap it and start over. And I basically only look at it once every six months to a year, so... yeah, not sure that its ever getting done.

Plus I am a terrible writer, which doesn't help. I enjoy writing dialogue and think I'm fairly good at it, but I am horrible at being descriptive, etc.

Sad thing is, a lot of ideas I had in Jr high and high school for future stories I've been seeing bits and pieces of in TV and movies and video games, etc. NBC's Chuck for example has way too many similarities to the main story I've been working on--but I never posted it online or anything and I doubt NBC executives scanned the notebook under my bed, so...

What I do even before I start outlining is I word-vomit. I just take a notepad (or a word processor), and I free-write about the basic plot setup, I freewrite until I have characters with clear motivations and distinguishable traits (Hmm, what would this character do? Why does he act this way?). Then I free-write a more detailed plot, keeping in mind what the characters I've created would do in the situations they're put in. Then I outline it so I can organize all that mess.

It's a hell of a lot of preparation, but it gives me guidance and keeps me from having those "crap, where do I go from here?" moments. For the story I'm currently editing, I did "word vomit" process before I began, but I even continued to free-write every time I sat down, so I could warm up and refresh myself on where I wanted the plot to go. The final story was fifty pages and the word-vomit notes were almost half as big! That's a hell of a lot of time spent hammering away at something that won't see print, but I'm pretty confident it was worth it.