A New Direction

I’ve decided on a change of focus for this blog. I discovered recently that posting something here is effectively the first publishing of that work, and publishers don’t like things that have been published before. I just used three different variations of the word ‘publish’ in that sentence. And I want to be a writer. Sheesh.
Anyway, the upshot of this is that I don’t want to go publishing (there it is again) all my stuff here and then later find that I can’t sell it. So, instead, I’m going to use this blog to post details of what I’m working on, progress reports, things in the real world that might be affecting my writing and maybe, if you’re lucky, the odd snippet of my work.
So, just what am I working on? Well, at the moment not much. I have several ideas in my head, each vying for my attention and I'm not really sure which to go for first.
There's an action/thriller about a martial artist who goes against the grain and starts kicking criminal butt all over the place. I'm not all that certain exactly where to go with that one. The lead character is a good one, although there's a little too much of me in him for my liking.
I like the premise, basically our guy, Ryan Philips, is sort of like a real life superhero. He doesn't have any special powers, he's just a very good martial artist, oh and clever too (of course, I did say he was like me ;)), so he's more realistic in that sense, but he is in another way too. Unlike Batman, or Superman, or just about any other superhero (except, perhaps, Spiderman), he works against the law. He has to fight the authorities too. Although, because he's the good guy, he can't actually hurt them.
The problem is that I don't really have anything more than that yet, no real plot or story. But I'm working on it. Watch, as they say, this space.
Another idea is a story written from the perspective of a character who has brain damage of some kind, because of an accident, or an illness or something. Inside their head they are fine and can think perfectly normally, but outside, the damage to their brain prevents them from communicating effectively with the rest of the world. This novel is basically my answer to how the brain and the soul can be seperate entities, as religion would have it. The soul - the true 'you' - communicates with the world via the brain. If the brain is damaged, they can no longer communicate.
Then there's the fantasy stuff. One world I'd really like to write about is an advanced magic using world. It's not as easy as it sounds, because I don't want to simply replace the technology we use in this world with magic, I want their magical technology to have advanced along different lines to ours.Again, I don't really have any stories or plots to set in this world, I just really like the idea.
My big project, the one I really really like, is also a fantasy world. I don't want to give too much away here because I hope that some of you will end up test reading it for me, and I don't want you to know the 'big thing' about the world before you do.
This world started off as an attempt to write a novel in the style of an RPG game. If you've ever played Baldur's Gate, you'll know where I'm coming from. In this game, you play a character who goes off on a quest. Along the way you meet people who can join you on your journey, both to help you and to enlist your help with their own quests. When you meet each new character, they have a whole load of backstory that is gradually revealed as you play through the game.
I wanted to do something similair, but I wanted to reveal each of my character's backstories together, not waiting until they met the main character (henceforth referred to as MC). The trouble here was that this would essentially result in my having 6 or more MC's, and therefore 6 or more points of view (POV). This is not a god thing in a novel. It could work if they were all seperated, but I wanted them all together, which would make it hard to get the reader close to any of them.
So I've shelved that idea, but I've kept the world and the characters that I began to develop for it, and they've already begun to give me some good plots.
Too many good plots, in fact, which is one reason I haven't actually done much writing. I just don't know where to start. It's very hard to explain, but all of this stuff is flying around in my head, wanting to get out onto paper, but when I sit down to write, it all disappears. It's like it's shy or something.

As well as using my own brain, I've begun picking a good deal of others too. Firstly I discovered an absolute gem of a website, called Forward Motion: http://fmwriters.com/community/ .
It's basically an online writers' community with forums, tutorial articles, research links and tons of other stuff. I've spent quite a lot of time browsing around the site and have already learned a great deal about the business of writing.
I've also bought a few books on the subject. Self Editing For Fiction Writers is a book written by two professional fiction editors and offers loads of tips on editing your own manuscript before submission. I just finished this one on the way to work, and I really liked it. I don't have a manuscript to edit yet, but it will surely pay to have the editing points in mind when writing.
Writing The Breakout Novel promises advice on how to set your novel apart from all the rest, but since it has yet to arrive, I can't say how well it performs, but it has very good reviews.
On a non-fiction note, I also got How To Be A Freelance Journalist, as this is something I have considered as well as a career. I haven't started reading this one either, but again, it was well received in all of the reviews I read.