Becoming a Fiction Writer

About a week ago, I had the privlege of guest blogging on someone's site. That site was Becomng a Fiction Writer. The person who runs it is Amanda Kendle. Quite close to Amazon Kindle, would't you say? Anyway, it is my great pleasure to introduce her. Now, to tell you of her writing journey, Amanda Kendle. Take away, Amanda.

Like Rob, writing has always been my passion. I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a writer, and my grandmother dates back my writing ambitions to a time which must have been before I could even read. But if you ask me why, or what I like about writing, then that's a more difficult question to answer.

Writing is hard work. Sometimes you can write pages and then decide it's all rubbish. It's just lucky that the delete key is less environmentally-damaging than the old way of screwing up the bit of paper and adding it to the wastepaper bin, like in the movies. But like all hard work, when you complete something, you feel really satisfied.

I've dabbled in all kinds of writing over the years, with short stories, poetry, non-fiction and more recently blog posts taking up my time. But what I like reading the most is also what I want to write the most, and that's novels. The only problem is that a novel is a pretty huge undertaking, and it takes a lot of time, motivation and dedication to get one finished. I had so many false starts but finally used the pressure of NaNoWriMo - when you join an online group of people determined to write the entire draft of a novel within the month of November - to get my first one finished.

An incarnation of that novel - it's been through so many changes since that first draft - did well in an Amazon contest and although it hasn't been published yet, I'm kind of confident it will be one day. And now the sky's the limit, because once you know you can write one novel, you know you can write two, or ten, or twenty. I'm just finishing off my second now, and it's not getting any easier, but that's okay. It's still a hell of a lot of fun.

To keep myself under pressure, I blog about my fiction writing at Becoming A Fiction Writer. Knowing that people across the world are reading my constant promises to finish that next novel, and helping me out with comments and encouragement, makes it one step easier.

"As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning. " — Neil Gaiman