Your first drafts need to be the most fucking perfect thing you have ever written.

Do you post your stories on sites like Wattpad or Fictionpress in hopes of getting feedback?  Out of those of you that do how many of you get comments like this? "I found a lot errors, you should edit before you post." or "You should get an editor when you finish there were a ton of errors."

No shit?  The great thing about the digital age is it's easier for artists to get their work out there; to get feedback and help.  Something writers in times gone by couldn't. The problem?  People seem to think you are posting these finished immaculate stories for their viewing pleasure.  So in other words, you put in all the hard work of a working writer but getting any of the benefits because you are posting it on the site out of the kindness of your heart.

Yeah that's right, they expect you to post publish worthy quality for them to read for free!  They seem to forget the whole point of the site is for you to read it and give feedback.  Not for them to get free fucking books.

Now you might be thinking, "But Melissa them pointing out your errors is feedback."

No, it isn't.  That's treating your work like they are grading it. Seriously, writers at the first stage of writing care more about characters, plot and overall flow of the story.  Once editing starts that's when they care about spelling and grammar, because at that point it does matter.  For people who want to be published the editing works a little like this: Edit yourself, then you get professional to edit it.

You know, someone you pay to fix your shit.  Sure on those sites you can get an 'editor' or a 'beta'.  The problem? Most are not reliable or that savvy on spelling and grammar.  Worse half don't even know how to help you fix character problems like severe personality switches or plot flow.  So yeah your story might look good enough to get by the common rabble but that's it.

It makes me think that these sites have just lost their meaning.  They are just places for teenagers to feel popular and people to try and sound smart while getting free books.

I am not going to share the final clean cut edit on the sites I am on, are you fucking mad?  I want the story published!  I am not going to post the finished product on a site so you can read it for free and I get nothing for the money and time I spent on it. No, you are out your damn mind!

So do we go back to giving our work to our friends and family and hope they will give us honest feedback or do we continue to try and wade through the cesspool of these sites?

While you think on that remember kids to whistle while you work it:

Oh and these words of wisdom:

Myth: It only takes a few months to write a novel.

When I mention I am working on a book and someone is like, "Oh so you will be done in a few months."  I am just like

Seriously? A few months? I don't know where this idea/mentality came from but it needs to go the fuck away and quick like. Sure you can possibly finish one in a few months, it will just look like your cat crapped it out.  You can't really think you can write something that quickly and expect it to be the next LotR or Harry Potter series, let alone actually decent enough for publishing.

Writing any novel worth it's salt is a long and painful journey that often is nourished by your tears.  There is also the sheer amount of frustration from both characters and scenes just not wanting to go how you wanted.  If you are not on the verge of tears you are close to just saying "fuck all!"

If you are thinking if you plan your shit out from the get go this won't happen, you are lying to yourself and the universe at large. Even with this complex outline that would make a spider jealous this happens.  Why?  Because you are not perfect, because your characters are not perfect(well at least they better not be) so at some point you diverged from your characters personality just enough that this one scene no longer works.  Or the scene worked in theory but turns out that's it.

So you managed to get passed all that and the occasional writers block? Yay!  You are still not done.  Now you need to self edit and find an actual editor who is going to cost money.  Guess what? Those are expensive running on the low end of fifteen dollars an hour spent on your manuscript.  Now guess what?  This isn't going to be a one time deal here, after the do an initial edit you go in and change what you want and make your own changes based on what they edited and then, thats right, they have to edit it again.  This could go on for months!

Now that is out of the way time to send off to publishing houses to be looked at, this is assuming you are skipping the part where you should get an agent. Each firm can take up to six months to get back to you and more than likely tell you no.  So you have to keep sending it out to the limited publishing houses you have access to or get a damn agent.

So you want an agent now.  Well you need the right one for you.  You just can't pick one at random and hope for the best your book will never sell.  You need an agent who likes the genre you are writing in who will understand your targeted audience and send your manuscript to the right publishing houses. So this hunt can take up to months as well.

But you have one now, and you will still face rejection left and right, but now you have more options and eventually someone says yes.  Now it's going through all the paperwork and rights stuff to make sure you don't get fucked over and the publishing house doesn't as well.

Finally after all that your book goes to print.

So easy right?

That awkward first post.

So what should my first ramble be all about?  I guess I could use this to prepare you for what is to come?  Yeah, that sounds good.

Well, let's see, there will be a ton of spelling errors and grammar issues as my keyboard randomly shorts out and I am dysgraphic. I should get that out there now.  I also like to swear, you have been warned.

This blog will be about my writing and others' writing.  How much things piss me off about writing.  My opinion on things involving writing, which kind of goes hand in hand with things that piss me off about writing.

I will also blog about gaming, this is not limited to but mostly about Elder Scrolls, World of Warcraft, Rift, and maybe Dragon Age.  This could be from opinions on something to ficlets of my characters( I know everything relates back to writing.)

There might be the occasional rant about something unrelated to the topics above, like the Social Justice Media.  Prepare for that to get offensive.  I have strong opinions and since this is my blog and you don't have to read it I will not be sweet about it. 

I might also spam screenshots of my Skyrim gaming because I am cool like that. It will look something like this:

Looks nice doesn't it? 

Or pictures of my characters from my games like so:

Does she look badass?  Or characters from my stories like thus:

Hi Patrick.

Oh, that reminds me I should tell you all the book I am focusing on finishing and getting ready for the publishing world!

That would be "Ashes of the Dawn", a vampire novel.  Now don't go running away! I promise it isn't a romance and everyone is over the age of twenty-one.  Shit, the youngest among the characters is Aria and she is twenty-five.   So don't freak out!

Patrick is the main character, and the vampire.  I will do a separate post regarding the book in more detail.

Other original works I work on from time to time are:

Heart of Courage.

Anvil Heart.

What Makes a Demon's Soul? (Formally A Demon's Heart.  I am shitty with romance titles.)

Poems of a Broken Mind.

Well I guess that is it for now.  I will say I covered everything and immediately think of something I missed after I post this. That's how it always happens.