The FJ Writer's Thread

[crazyforkate]

Any other writers on this site? Professional, hobby, whatever.

 

I started writing when I was 11. I've previously written plays, short stories and way too much fanfiction. Right now I'm at work on my first original novel, which believe it or not was inspired by that horrid SAHD story about the abortion clinic we read the other day. We'll see how it goes, I'm still figuring out the characters.

 

What are your current projects?

[Claddagh]

I started writing at a young age. I took a creative writing class in college and really enjoyed it.

Right now I'm working on a story about a girl who is on the Titanic. The fundies will hate it as she's a suffragist, wants a career, and disobey's her parents by going to America to be with her fiancee.

The second one is a story set from 1860 to the 1870's. A young woman named Hannah disguises herself as a boy in order to fight in the war. There's mention of spiritualism among other things that were popular in those days. It's very grim in parts so I have to take a break from it every so often.

[EyeQueue]

I've done some professional writing for university-level literature textbooks, and currently write for an on-line literature/education site that tries to open up literature for high schoolers and make it more relatable.

I also have written fiction from a young age. Sadly, though, I've never finished a project. All that's changing now, though, and I'm getting more serious about the writing. I have a couple of projects in the works right now, but the one I've made the most progress on is a YA "reboot" of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

[crazyforkate]

That sounds awesome! The 1860's one looks particularly interesting. Are these short stories, novels, in between?

My current novel is a story of a (fictional) abortion clinic in South Dakota and a series of attacks against them. However, the main point of the story is the friendships between the staff (all female) and the incidents in their personal lives. I've sketched out a plot involving the clinic's doctor, and her relationship with her husband, and her friendship with one of the nurses, but the other characters still need some fleshing out, and the plot currently just consists of a series of incidents with nothing to really unite it. I also wrote a play about an illegal abortion in the 1930's in Canada once. I seem to write about abortion a lot...

And EyeQueue, totally get it! I've never finished a big project either, just a couple of one-act plays and some short stuff (mostly when there were grades involved). Good luck with your reboot! Your job sounds interesting.

[EyeQueue]

That sounds awesome! The 1860's one looks particularly interesting. Are these short stories, novels, in between?

My current novel is a story of a (fictional) abortion clinic in South Dakota and a series of attacks against them. However, the main point of the story is the friendships between the staff (all female) and the incidents in their personal lives. I've sketched out a plot involving the clinic's doctor, and her relationship with her husband, and her friendship with one of the nurses, but the other characters still need some fleshing out, and the plot currently just consists of a series of incidents with nothing to really unite it. I also wrote a play about an illegal abortion in the 1930's in Canada once. I seem to write about abortion a lot...

And EyeQueue, totally get it! I've never finished a big project either, just a couple of one-act plays and some short stuff (mostly when there were grades involved). Good luck with your reboot! Your job sounds interesting.

Thanks! :D I've finished some short pieces, as well, but it's been many years. The "reboot" is a kind of horror/sci-fi twist on the original play, and I'm really liking it. My only test audience so far has been my 13-year-old daughter, but she seems to think it's cool, so we'll see. I've set myself a goal of getting the first draft finished by July, and then go through a round or two of revisions, and then maybe try to find an agent sometime in the Fall or next winter (or go the e-publishing route--I haven't decided yet).

The writing I do for that site brings in a pretty good side income, but unfortunately my "day job" is much less interesting (p/t intellectual property analyst). I'm a university-level instructor (I have a Ph.D. in English), but jobs are tough to come by now, and I'm completely unwilling to traipse across the US now to take 1- or 2-year contingent positions with no job security.

[Claddagh]

That sounds awesome! The 1860's one looks particularly interesting. Are these short stories, novels, in between?

The Titanic story will definately be a novel.

I'm not too sure about my 1860's one yet. I'm starting at one end and seeing where it goes.

[samurai_sarah]

The Titanic story will definately be a novel.

I'm not too sure about my 1860's one yet. I'm starting at one end and seeing where it goes.

I'd totally buy both of those!

I've been writing from a very young age onwards too. Mainly because my parents were annoyed that I wanted to go to the library yet again. ("But you've only been a few days ago, are you sure you've read all your books? Well, here's paper, how about you write your own?") So, that's what I did. In my teens I wrote a whole series about a dynasty of "witches" in a small medieval village, spanning several generations, and their rise to power. Terribly melodramatic stuff, but my friends all enjoyed it. One day, I might go back and do something about it. The actual story wasn't too bad, albeit terribly gruesome.

Currently, I'm working on two projects, one about a small contemporary German village dealing with its Nazi past, or rather exploring how it has affected subsequent generations. And the other one is a crime story set in 17th century Flanders, during the War of the Grand Alliance, because spies and stuff. And I get to play "dress-up". That one always gets bogged down with new historical research, dealing with the religious aspects and tensions of everyday life, and quite frankly, siege-warfare is a bit boring to describe. If I ever finish that one, it will never see the light of day again, because it is just me amusing myself.

[ILoveJellybeans]

I have been writing since I was little, but I rarely finish my stories because I have a short attention span.

Most of my stories have always been based on real people, as its my way of expressing myself and working out real issues. As a child it was either set in a school with characters as me and my friends and people I went to school with but with different names, or about families. I always wished I was part of a big family (my family size has since then gone from just me and my sister, to 6 of us) so would write in me and my siblings but add in extra kids. I liked the idea of having an older sister, so I always gave myself one, and there were always at least 10 of us. I remember in one story, me and my two best friends were triplets and we also had 2

sets of triplet siblings younger than us and a baby sister.

I also wrote about families which were suspiciously similar to fundies (large families, extremely scheduled, kids werent allowed to do fun stuff and worked all the time, homeschooled, wore ugly beige or grey clothes). In one of my stories, the main character was a girl who was adopted by a fundie couple and ran away from home to find her birth parents. I also did a few wife swap type things, where two moms would swap lives, usually a fundie family and a family who had no rules at all and let the kids do whatever they want.

When questioning my sexuality, I wrote a few stories with characters based on me, who were lesbians and dating girls based on people I had crushes on. I was always the hero of the story, and it was a bit like a fairytale kinda thing where I would save the girl from something and she would fall in love with me.

My latest story that I am sort of writing at the moment is more of a documentary sort of thing, with members of the same family who were raised fundie, but grew up and had their own kids. Some are still fundie, some are more fundie lite, others have completely left the religion. There are two gay couples (one with 10 adopted kids), one who has quintuplets, one who is still fundie and a smug douchebag, one who is now a Muslim and has identical twin boys.... Theres also a few extended family members who sometimes show up, who are parodies of various fundies, and the crazy hippie cousin. Their mom totally went insane after all of her many kids left home, and now has 19 cats named after the Duggar kids who she talks about as if they were children and she also is a hoarder.

[happy atheist]

I co-write with Mr Atheist. I also collaborated with a friend on another novel. It's insane and most likely unpublishable, but we subjected everyone in our critique group to it anyway.

[mockingbird]

I have been writing as long as I can remember. When I was younger my sister and I made newspapers written "by" our dolls. I completed half a novel in high school. I have the rest plotted out and just got busy. It's kind-of fluffy, but I think after I am done with my current project I might go back to that one and update/finish it just because it was fun. It was about the modern lives of princesses, kind-of a "The Princess Diaries" type theme but it also involved a runaway. I've also completed two NaNoWriMo novels. One is a short little kids' book that went with a present I gave one of my friends. The other was the precursor to what I am working on now but I realized the main story was about one of the side characters, so now I am rewriting her whole story. I have been working on that novel for a few years and I think I'm about 1/3 of the way through. It's long because I keep thinking of new ideas/plots and I want to cover all of them!! It will be done eventually, I just don't have a lot of time to work on it. It is about a girl living with chronic leukemia and basically how illness affects (and doesn't affect) her everyday life. It kind-of emerged as a response to me getting annoyed with the crappy portrayal of illness in a lot of books. But it's research-heavy, so that's why I'm thinking of going back to the princess one when I am done with it - I'd like to go in a more imaginative/fantasy direction vs. heavy real-life stuff.

When I am done, I am thinking of submitting the leukemia book to an agent. I want to try that first before going the self-publishing route just to see what happens.