Bernadette Benda

I have been a writing since….*grabs calculator* basically since forever, but I didn’t get “serious” till I was about eight. By “serious” I mean I wanted to be a writer, and I wrote nearly every day. And like most writers that age….I winged it. For the next like, 7 years.

*Disclaimer: I wasn’t on on my own. I had some writer friends, and my Mom was a great editor.*

Good times. Just that there were certain things that took me a while to get the concept of…

*Jumps in a time machine and takes you to the past*

You mean those numbers on the left hand corner of Microsoft Word? Yeah? Those are IMPORTANT???

I seriously only noticed page numbers. It was only when I started paging through the guidelines of literary magazines that I noticed a trend….they wanted a word count (for fiction. For a while I only tried to publish poetry).

The other thing was length. I had this notion that 20 pages was a TREMENDOUS amount of writing. (I say this as I sit next to my 766 page manuscript. *pats self on back for coming such a long way*).

Hahaha…*trails into nervous laughter*. How did I start writing fantasy? I was writing “historical fiction”. But I was making everything up. Soon legends and magical weapons were creeping their way in…

Then I was like hey, am I writing fantasy??

Yes. Yes I was. So from there I plunged full throttle into – *stops because of my upcoming post for next week*

This was a hard one. For the LONGEST time, I only wrote when inspired, so usually in short spurts. I had actually heard from some people that you have to write when you’re uninspired, even if you feel like you’re writing garbage. I was strongly AGAINST THIS. Because I’d just have to rewrite it the next day, right? I’d be wasting my time, right???

WRONG. WOW SO WRONG.

But I found that out eventually and all worked out and they lived happily ever after.

If you have 23 WIPs going on at the same time, you will never finish anything.

EVER.

Hence, I kinda didn’t. A few yes, but I have a large stack of unfinished stories that is much larger than the stack of finished.

Keep your projects limited guys.

At one point, I thought I’d try outlining because…you’re supposed to do that apparently?? So I tried. And tried is the key word.

I knew squat about outlining (or pre-writing that is). I ended up just writing scenes word for word, just without the fancy description. Took a while, and I didn’t really get anywhere.

So I gave up.

*I still don’t use outlining that much. I just kinda outline as I go, on a “as needed” basis. Last November I formally outlined my Nanowrimo novel, but that has been all*

Like chain mail….WAIT WAIT. SPOILERS.

That blog post next week that I mentioned? It is the sequel to this post, focusing on all the things I didn’t know about fantasy when I first started.

From here runs the story of how I buried myself in articles about writing and all things writing related.

Peace out,

Bernadette