How it all began...

Like many, I have long been drawn to the idea of writing. And like many, I did nothing much about it. Sure, there are some old poems, and the odd short story floating around. But they were never very serious, and at no point did I consider myself to be a writer, even though I thought that I had a modicum of talent.

So what changed? I guess it was the National November Writing Month, NaNoWriMo in 2013.

I entered in 2013 (and won) developing a science fiction novel that pitted three races against each other, as they fought over a source of ultimate power. It was not a good book, but I had fun writing it. I found that while I struggled with things like plot, character arc, timelines, etc, I really excelled at descriptions, motivations, and one or two other things.

In short, I felt that I had some good ideas, but was simply too inexperienced to bring them off successfully.

So I set about trying to teach myself the various tricks of the trade. To do this, I started to write short stories.

I have written about a dozen or so, in the last six months, some of which I may feature here. The process of writing short stories is obviously quite different than that for a full length novel, but there are some necessary elements which carry over.

But I am not going to talk about that. There are many other writers much more qualified, who can tell you far more than I can. But I just wanted to paint a picture of how I got started.

So, after NaNoWriMo, I joined a local group of like minded people and have found their personal stories, enthusiasm and talent, inspirational. I'll talk about them at a later time.

And that is it, in a nutshell.