Being 38 years old and still only talking about writing a book, I have come before you today looking for encouragement. I have no English degree, nor have I ever been published. Hell, I'm really not even an avid reader. You can tell by my postings that I have only a loose grasp of grammatical rules.
However what I have to my credit are stories. Many great stories. I have two friends that are published authors (one writes travel articles and one writes cookbooks - but published just the same) and I have been told that my stories not only have potential, but could, with two equal parts polish and luck, become great stories.
Stephen King, after writing Bag of Bones, said that he can deal with an author that has a story but no craft. A nice story can be driven down to the local ice cream shop, down to the beach and back home. Prose with no real story might appear pretty, however it has little more use than a planter outside of the house. (Of course this is a loose paraphrase from what I remember hearing a year ago.)
I have thought about using training-wheels to start and sharing some stories with professional (or at least more highly educated) writers and seeing if we can make a go of it that way.
Well... there ya go. I would appreciate any input you might be able to provide. I'm not big about posting my stories on the internet, but I would love to participate in any writing workshops or whatever else might benefit me or others.
Regards,
Jux
