I never know what to say for the blog titles.

Delved into a new hobby: writing fiction. A certain subset, mwahaha, but we won't get into that. I'm finding that the most difficult part is writing believable dialogue. All I've ever written is nonfiction. I always pushed the envelope with Associated Press style with my articles, but it was never really outside the box of the rigid style journalists have to adhere to (i.e. inverted-pyramid, anecdotes, quotes from at least 3 sources, typically 500 words per article, etc). Now that I'm left without those guidelines, I feel a bit too free. One of my problems is that I have trouble making decisions unless I have goals and guidelines, so this is pretty difficult. The part that is making it easier is doing a LOT of reading up on similar stories that I want to emulate and writing my detailed outlines. I find that once I write an outline and do any necessary research that whatever story I've set out to tell will write itself. See, already I take the journalist's approach of gathering information, assessing what I have, and then going from there. The problem here is that now I'm totally confused because I have no experience to fall back on in this arena. Once I have all my interviews transcribed and my research completed, writing a 500-word article is cake. This is totally different and daunting. I have a bajillion mini stories floating around my lap top just to get my feet wet, but this whole beginning-middle-end, omniscient 3rd person narrator, rounding out the characters, giving the proper setting...man, it just never ends. My dream would be to a) just finish a god-forsaken story and then b) put it online on a free web site and see if it gets attention/comments, and then c) maybe if it's good enough, get paid.

Recently, I discovered the beauty of the "e-book." Literally, you just write a book and pay a fee to a hosting site and get commission for the sales of your e-books, which buyers read in an online-friendly format. It's way less hassle than finding a publisher and promoting yourself that way, because anybody can say they have an e-book if they pay a hosting site, it's just a matter of getting enough sales to make it worth your while. The whole self-promotion thing is a bit of a head scratcher, but one idea for that is posting free stories on free hosting web sites and putting up information about your longer e-books that can be purchased. That would be an ideal move for me, because I'm such a writing/reading junkie and it's something that I can do on my own time without a boss. There are certainly editors you can find online, though, really easily. I've already contacted a few of them and I've even volunteered my own editing services to others. Editing is another job I enjoy, mainly because it kills me to see the frequent grammatical errors floating around, especially online, where ppl talk like this lol. PET. PEEVE. The occasional use of "Net Lingo" doesn't bother me, but when people talk exclusively in shorthand I just want to set myself on fire. I certainly have my own weaknesses in my writing, but when I see flagrant disregard for my beloved language, I get irritated.

Anyway, we'll see if this whole making-money-at-writing dream pans out. Wish me luck on my noble quest.