Online Writing Help

My boyfriend is trying his hand at writing a novel, his first attempt. He’s actually a musician, a singer/songwriter who is also a painter of interesting abstract paintings. In the past he has written mostly lyrics and poetry so he told me it’s more difficult than he would have expected to write a novel because he has to sustain what he’s doing for such a long time plus really develop some characters.

First he sat down and came up with an outline where he basically decided in which directions he would take the narrative. He told me that was somewhat unsuccessful because when he sat down to write, creativity took over and the story went in ways it wanted to go and he felt less in control of it than he expected to. So, in short, even though he’s enjoying it and will try to complete it, he has decided that this might be his one try to write a long piece of fiction unless he figures out the way it works best for him while he’s writing it.

I read constantly, usually four or five books at once, and I always seem to be reading at least two novels. I love fiction. Once I began to write a novel though, I realized that at heart I am basically a poet and a lyricist so a longer piece of fiction doesn’t come as naturally to me.

One of my favorite authors is Richard Brautigan who has written some unusual books. One reviewer stated on a book back that to read Brautigan is like reading Mark Twain if Twain had been spending time in a marijuana field before writing.

It doesn’t matter if Mr. Brautigan writes novels, short stories or poetry, he is always hilarious plus insightful to read.

I had a great college library. They owned a collection of Brautigan’s poetry, and I have never found it anywhere else. Reading it got me to seek out all his other writing such as his comedic novel ‘The Hawkline Monster’.

My boyfriend is also a truly hilarious person no matter what art he is practicing. When I get to read the pieces of his novel that he’s collected so far I just want to read more, which is definitely a good sign.

It seems to me that anyone trying to find writing help to write a novel is seeking this sort of response. That the reader will begin reading, and want more than anything to keep on reading. Since a novel is lengthy, when I don’t feel compelled to read it right off,  I will probably give up on it after the first or second chapter. I believe strongly in my boyfriend’s artistic ability, so even though he professes that it’s difficult, I really want to see what he comes up with when he has completed his project.

There is that series of books for the person knowing nothing about a subject.  I’ve noticed that the series seems to be a fairly popular phenomenon.  I suppose that this is because if someone doesn’t know a thing about a subject at all than it can be comforting to find a book that says it is for complete dummies on the subject.  I saw one book of that type that was about how to deal with difficult people.

I flipped through it and found it to be pretty good.  It was a good simplified telling of how people who are hard to get along with might behave and it had advice for how to not allow them to affect you and your feelings.  I have looked in several other books from that series.  I looked at one that was about writing help on how to write a novel.  That particular book seemed too simplified to me for anyone to really glean much helpful information from it.

The subject of how to write a novel in some ways could be considered general but it is also fairly personal.  People have different learning styles and different approaches work well for different individuals.  If I were going to write a novel I am sure I would approach it in a much more disorganized way than some other people would.  Even though I found the simplistic how-to book about how to write a novel too general for my taste, I am still very glad that there are so many how-to books available on so many diverse topics.  I prefer how-to books that are more complicated than general, but different approaches work at different times.  If I really know almost nothing about a topic then I think I do appreciate a more simplistic and general approach to it than if it is a subject I have already learned a lot about.  Anyway, I am pleased that there is so much variety available in the world of how-to books.