Always a writer?

Many years ago I wanted to write and I did, some of my scribblings were in main stream magazines, but as time went on I just did not have the drive or the time to carry on. Yes computers were around, just but life takes over if you let it, and that still holds true today. Yes I know all those die hard people use the trusted pen / pencil and paper. But if your spelling is not great you will find you use a lot of paper, and half your time looking in the dictionary to find the correct spelling. A correctly set up computer will highlight this for you.

I do use pen and paper when I wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night with blurry eyes, a great story in my head that I don't want to lose,.I find myself writing in capitals even with my glasses on as my eyes are still asleep. I did quite a few short courses on writing over the year and did enjoy every single one of the courses, but they all came to an end, then I was on my own again. So just over 14 months ago I decided to join a local writing club to give me focus, and if you like a reason to write. In my head I was always a writer but on paper I was not.

I had bought many how to write books, but never found the time to read many of them, I was always at work or just wasting time watching television. I don't watch much television at all now, I would get rid of it, but the wife and children would go ape.(Mad) So I tuck my self away in my office with the rabbit and the dog, visited by the two cats and sometimes humans, but only sometimes.

This is Garfield, he is in one of my stories, I have had him since he was born, I still have his mother Alfie, he is 7 this year and she is 8 years old. (2014)

So I joined this writing group, not because I need help to write no, and I hope that day never comes. It was to give me a deadline to work to, not that anything would happen if I turned up without anything to read.

I now craved information on how to get my work out there, I love only having two weeks to do the home work. I get a word or sentence then I have to write a short story to fit the word count and subject, I then once read at the club I extend it in to a much longer bit of writing, this works on so many different levels.

Now I have the bug as they say, I'm writing more and more, I have written more in the past 12 months that I had in the 12 years before. Now because of the computer age, I can store, send, and email my work as well as editing and re write my work. I am just glad that I can type 40 wpm, I learnt that over 28 years ago, but that's another story.

I think that is enough for today.

If you have any questions or requests for subjects please send me a message, I always look forward to interacting with others.

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/BarryXYZMartin

Barry bye for now.

Spelling mistakes, grammar, punctuation.

First I must say that yesterday I made a 'typo' this was not made on purpose, so I could talk about something today. Perhaps if I had it could have been called 'pantsing,' but I didn't.

Do you have trouble with 'typos?' spelling mistakes or is it that things are spelt differently in different countries?
How do you deal with it?
Do you use proof readers?
Do you use your family or friends to help or pay professionals?

So many questions, I like to re read but still make mistakes, I don't use grammar programs should I?
I find that when I write my first draft not many mistakes happen, normally they tend to happen when I
re write. This is because I tend to change a word and then sometimes forget to re read the whole sentence. Yes I use spell checker, but if I spell a word correctly it is not underlined in red, but it could be the wrong tense, a bit like red and read. They both sound the same but have compete different meanings.

I find that reading out aloud is the best way to see if something runs, and if I can get someone else to read it aloud, then that is even better, because I can see where they breath. I then find that I can put the punctuation in correctly as well.

How many times have you read your own work and your eyes have self corrected the word, but on the written page the word stays wrongly spelt. If you have professional proof readers it would hoped that one of them would have picked it up.

I am very aware that I'm going to read through this blog to see if there are any words that have been misspelt in error. Of course if you are in the USA and you are reading an English author then some spelling are correct in one country but not in another. So if you write for the American market, do you have your computer set up for the correct spelling in that country?

Wow this has been a long session. Please give feed back, or questions.

IS this where I say I have two books out? And then put the link on the bottom of the page and ask you to have a look, OK it was a rhetorical question, here you are.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eight-Bites-life-Barry-Martin-ebook/dp/B00HSRJJEG

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eight-Short-Stories-Life-Laughter-ebook/dp/B00HN8UEJY

IF you enjoyed my blog please tell others, if you did not enjoy this blog please tell me.

Barry.

ps I changed load of my writing above, it made sense when I first wrote it, strange.

New to blogging

Hi I am new to blogging and find it all a bit strange, I have just watch Joanna Penn on a you tube video and she said that the power of blogging is great, what ever that means, not sure.

Anyway here I am trying to find my way around it's like going to a new school for the first time and not knowing where everything is. OK I found this page by accident I think but at least I found it.

I have got two kindle books out there and I have started to write my novel which is about Phoebe who is now 10 going on 22 as they say, oops nearly typed an extra two.I have the start of the novel and some of the chapters but I do need time to see how the story will unfold.

Well I have a currently short story called 'bad hair day' it is about Phoebe my character and her hair which is long and needs a cut not only that but I was set a challenge to write a story starting, 'I won the cup,' I know what a silly start. I have done the first draft and its 940 words long at the moment, it does need a tweaking and I will be doing in the next few days I hope, perhaps Sunday as the family is normally asleep.