Hi, Hadar!

Thank you so much for writing! I'm really happy that you like "The Star Shard"! I'm also glad to hear that you're a writer. Keep it up!

About the difficulty you mentioned: I think the key is imagining yourself inside the story. Really picture it in your mind. Think about it until it's as real as the world around you. Usually, when I find a story of my own going wrong or feeling "stupid," it's because I've stepped outside of it, and I'm trying to tell it at a distance. It's easy to get lazy as writers and to write things we don't really mean or haven't thought through. We write them just because they're easy. So get close to your story. Put your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and fingertips inside it--and also your emotions. If you really focus on what your main character is perceiving and thinking and feeling, I can almost guarantee that your story will no longer seem "stupid"--it will be about a very real person in a real situation. (And remember, don't make things easy for your main character! The challenges should be real and very hard to overcome. Also, don't make your character a "superman"--s/he should be a normal person, with fears and weaknesses just like the rest of us.)

As to your question about writing on paper vs. writing on a computer: I've done both, but I almost always write on a computer now. For me, that's faster and easier, and it's much easier to make changes later. If you know how to type, the computer makes it very simple get your thoughts quickly into a fixed form. However, you don't have to do it that way. The brilliant writer Joyce Carol Oates writes her rough drafts by hand on paper, because she doesn't want to spend all her time looking at a computer screen. And Garrison Keillor has pointed out that maybe the computer makes things too fast and easy--that maybe we should be forced to think a little more about each sentence before it's in a fixed form. So if you prefer writing with a pen or pencil on paper, you're in good company. (What's funny is that Mark Twain raved about the new technology that allowed him to get his thoughts down on paper as fast as he had them--and he was talking about the manual typewriter, which was the brand-new technology in his day! He was one of the first professional writers to compose stories on a typewriter.)

Sometimes I switch for variety, or if I'm away from my computer. My Cricket story "The Enchanted Mountain" was written with a pen on paper.

You asked about time. The rough draft of "The Star Shard" took me about a month, as I recall. Maybe a little longer. Of course, there was a lot of revising after that!

No--I didn't have a really clear idea of the whole story before I started writing it. I knew very roughly how I wanted it to end, but I had no idea how the story would get there. I discovered the whole plot by letting the characters act naturally, by paying close attention to what they would be experiencing, and by asking myself questions at every step.

Keep on writing!

Fred

this is really freaky, but i just wrote a letter alot like yours and then i found yours and was like oh my gosh! I have the exact same problem! it can b really anoying when i  like the begining!

Hi, Zoe!

I wish I could say yes, but to be honest, I have to say no -- I haven't read the old issues in a long time. But being reminded of them by this discussion, and especially hearing your question, I really want to read them again!

P.S.--It's great that you live in Maine! I can remember one of the first books my parents read to me when I was a baby was One Morning in Maine. I loved the illustrations and the idea of digging clams to eat I also loved the idea of blueberries growing all over the place!

Fred

Hi, Gabrielle!

That is funny that your letter was so much like the other one that came in at around the same time! I guess I've already answered some of your questions. As for the others: I don't think I can choose a favorite issue or story. There have been so many good ones!

As to how to get from the idea stage to the finished story stage: in the Chatterbox on this site, some people have talked about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. It's an activity based on the premise that the reason we usually don't finish writing a book is because we don't have a deadline. When you write stories for school, you have a deadline. The teacher tells you exactly when something needs to be turned in. If we can apply that same discipline to our creative stories, we can finish them in the same way. So one technique is to give yourself a deadline -- preferably, decide what days you'll be writing (every day, or however many days a week your schedule will allow -- maybe it's an hour in the evening three nights a week -- or whatever fits with your schedule). Then decide how many words you can reasonably write during that time. (Computers make it easy to count your words.) Then stick to the schedule! It's amazing how the finished pages pile up when you make yourself keep to a quota.

I hope that helps!

Fred

Hi, Kendra! Thanks for writing!

And thanks for writing! I'm always excited to hear from someone else who loves to put words on paper. My advice to young writers who want to become published authors?

1. Read. If you don't already, give yourself permission to read voraciously. Read for pleasure; read what you love. (Isn't that wonderful homework to have?)

2. Write. That's really the only way you're going to get published: write a lot. Keep on writing, and never give up. Finish your stories--lots of people start stories, but not very many keep writing until the stories are done. And don't be reluctant to revise and edit your stories until they're as good as they can be.

Have you been watching the Olympics? There's a lesson we writers can learn from the Olympics. Think about how much those athletes train for those games. Their whole lives are focused on what they do best. They work and work and work and strive to get better and better. That's what it takes for us, too. If you want to be a published author, writing can't just be something you "play with" now and then. You have to focus on it and work at it. If you can find good "coaches" along the way, so much the better. Meet other writers, join writers' groups, go to conferences, and learn all you can.

But most of all, just keep reading the books you love and writing what you want to write. Write the stories you love to read. Don't give up!

I wish you the best in your writing efforts. It's definitely worth it!

Fred

Duh! Of course you love it!