Name's Amanda, I'm a college student, part-time librarian, and fledgling novelist.  The title (cause I finally have one) of my modern-day fantasy novel is Chaos Unbound.  I'm writing it, most importantly, for me, to show myself that I can indeed write a novel.  It actually started out as a drabble...just bits and pieces of things, and then one day I sat down and saw that I had a...gasp!...novel forming.  It went from there, to become this fully-fledged world...I'm sure most, if not all, of you know what's that's like.  I'd say I'm doing all right so far...190 pages, 17 chapters, typed, and counting.... :-)

I wanted to encompass elements that I love about modern fantasy novels, like Jim's and Kim Harrison's, but I also had something I really, really wanted to focus on...a team.  With the story being first person, obviously one member sticks out from the rest, but I wanted the reader to feel as if they'd been thrown in with these four people, and they were seeing it from Lauren's (my narrator) point of view.  Maybe this is pretentious, but I wanted to throw the reader into the situations and have them, perhaps, feel as Lauren feels...like they don't have all the pieces sometimes, but they will eventually. 

It's my first attempt at a longer first-person narrated story, and I must admit, after writing in third-person for so long, I'm really enjoying doing it from one perspective.  Lauren's an interesting gal, and her relationships with her team members are very different, given that some of the members haven't been a part of her life as long as...well, Morgan has.  And no, that's not a reference at all to Jim's Morgan...I started writing this novel before I read any of Jim's books, so it's just one of those funny coincidences. ;-) 

I don't know about the rest of you, but I enjoy a story with a puzzle to it...I know when I read Storm Front I had a great time trying to piece out Harry's puzzle right along with him.  So I tried to encompass that kind of element into my novel.  We'll see what happens...if I think that, eventually, I've edited it to a point where I'll send it into a few publishers, great...if I get rejected (which will happen, I know), no big deal.  My life's pursuit isn't staked into this novel.  I wrote it for me, like I said earlier...I've got a few friends that want to read it when I'm through, and that's all fine and good.   I will be writing at least one more book, if not three or four to go along with Chaos Unbound, but I plan those to be later...far later in the future, unless by some ungodly chance my novel gets picked up by a publisher.  That's a different matter. :-) Good luck to you all...happy writing!

I rebel against outlining.  I have since the sixth grade.  I always hated it when teachers wanted an outline for every freaking assignment/essay.  So, when I started writing when I was fourteen, no outlines for me.  It's been that way ever since.  I'm no stellar author, but I think, for me, a story works better based off of one idea...then I hop from idea to idea, writing notes and bits and bobs of things in a notebook when they strike me.  Which is ususally right when I'm getting ready to go to bed.  So I don't sleep.    I'm also a big fan of sitting down and just writing...anything that comes to mind in any kind of relation to the story, when I'm stuck/blocked.  Some of my better ideas have come out of that "free writing", and whatever isn't of any use, I usually hold onto for a bit and then discard it.  Outlining, for me, is uber-pressure, as if I'm supposed to come up with something to put down.  I work well under pressure, but not the uber pressure.

Of course, that pressure is all in my head, and I've several people tell me I need my head checked....

My original writing had its starts in the fan fiction I wrote when I was a teenager (13 years old to around 16).  Like anyone familiar with the fan fiction world, I know there's the good, the bad, and the really, really ugly.  When I wrote fan fiction, it was because I was a huge fan of whatever fandom I was writing in, and I wanted to show my appreciation of that world and the people who created it.  It was never meant as anything but flattery.  But I know people who are frighteningly possessive of these worlds, so much so that they become warped, thinking that they're not just good, but better than the fandom's creator(s).  *shudder*  It was a tool I used to learn how to plot storylines, use characters, and understand the nature of language.  But it was just that: a tool, a way to practice.  Eight years later, I think I'm a better writer because of the practice I got.

While fan fiction can be fun, writing your own material is so much better.